Customers face card charges for failing to use Ryanair’s new payment card.

Airport news for Flights,Travel on 15/09/2011.

Arrange your travel plans by choosing from car hire, hotels, flights, airport parking and travel insurance using our form.

Budget airline Ryanair has launched a pre-paid card it calls a ‘Ryanair Cash Passport’. The company says it will soon require travellers to pay for Ryanair flights using the card if they want to avoid having extra fees added to the price of their tickets.

The carrier announced the new pre-paid payment method on Tuesday and said failing to use the card could result in significant extra fees. A typical family of four could have to pay up to £48 for return flights with the Irish family if the tickets are not paid for with the new card.

Starting in November, the Ryanair Cash Passport will be sole way of avoiding the extra charges. Under the law, companies must provide customers with at least on payment method with which they incur no extra charges. Any fees that cannot be avoided must be included in the stated price.

Consumer groups and regulators have attacked Ryanair over the move. They say the airline has steadily narrowed the range of options for travellers who seek to avoid extra charges that presently cost £6 each way per person.

Most business let people use debit cards for free and only apply card charges for people who use credit cards. In the past, Ryanair debit card payments would only be free for people using the relatively uncommon Visa Electron card.

Ryanair then changed its conditions so the only way people could avoid paying the extra charges was to use a pre-paid MasterCard. Implementing yet another change, particularly one that requires customers to sign up for Ryanair’s own card, is likely to trigger yet more criticism.

More Airport News