There was no drama on display in Dublin Airport before dawn on the first day of the Ryanair’s digital-only boarding pass regime.
Neither staff or passengers reported any difficulties when dealing with a newly paperless world.
From now on, virtually everyone travelling with the airline will have to use digital passes sent to the Ryanair app on smartphones and as the first wave of flights started departing from Terminal 1 shortly before 6am, there appeared to be full compliance with the new rules.
Ryanair is moving to a digital-only system that it said will bring lower “airport costs and fares for all Ryanair passengers” and “a better service (including flight info) for customers on the day of travel”.
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The airline said the new system will improve “customer service and rebooking during flight disruptions” and will “get rid of 300 tonnes of paper annually”.
Staff said on Wednesday that they had encountered no-one struggling to come to terms with the switch away from paper in the first hours of the rollout.
Passengers who spoke to The Irish Times were equally comfortable with the changes.
“The whole thing is really very simple,” one man said, who was flying first to Barcelona and then on to Mallorca. “I have been paperless for years now and I don’t know why they didn’t make the switch sooner, to be honest. I can’t see the point of the paper boarding passes.”
[ Why Ryanair is scrapping physical boarding passes, and what it means for youOpens in new window ]
A woman flying to Budapest before 8am had her phone ready to go as she approached the self-service baggage drop area and said that while she had no problem with the paperless system, she expressed concern about an older cohort.
“My grandfather travelled with us earlier this year and he actually left his phone at home and would have be stuck if he had not also had a print out of his boarding pass,” she said.
Ryanair has stressed that it will be accommodating for people in such situations and has said that “if you have already checked in online and you lose your smartphone or tablet [or it dies or gets left behind], your details are already on our system and you will be assisted at the gate”.
Ryanair staff were happy to help on Wednesday and when this newspaper asked one employee what we might do if we showed up without our digital boarding pass she first offered to guide us to where it could be found on our phone and then directed us to the Visa check desks, where she said someone would be able to assist us.
While Ryanair’s chief executive Michael O’Leary has said there might be teething problems in the days ahead, there were no signs of any mini-crises early on day one.
