Stansted weigh-in!

02/24/2010 - 06:51

Ciao e tutti, Just a little warning. Ryanair was weighing cabin baggage on the early flight last week from Stansted to Ciampino. I had practised so I put on my three coats & filled my pockets to get under the 10kg limit. Others were frantically loading one bag to try & avoid the £/€35 per bag charge. The weighing was not done at the gate but at the entrance to the satelite area that is exclusively Ryanair departures If you were overweight they took your boarding pass away until you had done something about it. So another ruse would have been to print out two copies (like I always do). There was no hint of scales at Ciampino. in bocca al lupo

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Travel

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Im not defending said airline / bus service in anyway because I find the flight to Italy a pretty miserable experiance (thankfully its only 2 hours or so), you just have to accept that if you stray from their rules your liable for a pretty big charge, our first and last overweight baggage issue coust us around Euro 45 for a few kilo's. What really winds me up - especially on early flights, is the constant announcements over the p.a. normally in a piercing voice at way too high a volume designed to sell a lottery ticket or purchase something from one of their "partners". Im a sure there timed them to wake you up every ten minutes.

Just to say they were not only weighing cabin baggage at Stansted last week, they also got EVERYONE to place their bag in the measuring frame. I saw a young couple with a baby and only one bag get an orange HEAVY sticker wrapped around their case handle as an alert to check in staff. Coming home from Pisa, again everyone was asked to place their case in the measuring frame. Mine got stuck, and amused smiles were soon wiped off some other passengers' faces when theirs also got stuck. The attendant didn't seem to mind how much we heaved and tugged to remove it, so long as it went in and came out somehow. One girl had to place her spiked heeled boot on the frame to keep it grounded while she used all her strength to heave her case out - nearly overbalancing herself and the frame!

Flew Stansted - Ancona last week and as you say the 'measuring frame' was flavour of the month. Unsure why, but I did not see the female Ryanair staff ask any single males to try the frame for size, just the women....strange that !!!!

If there was a thank you button to this post I'd press it... very useful. I always thought that duty free gear bought once through the 'weigh in' was not part of the 10kg limit. Clearly they are out to catch those of us who still think so. Can you imagine the scenes at the desk when someone has just bought his Christmas malt whiskey and is told to chuck it away and then go to back of the queue in which he has just stood for half an hour. These guys never stop thinking of ways to wind up the punters... one of these days some competition will come in and we'll have our revenge

We flew with Ryanair last week from Dusseldorf (Weeze) to Milan Bergamo. We have used this route several times. We have also flown with Ryanair from Dusseldorf (Weeze) to Stansted, Stockholm and Barcelona. We always travel with hand luggage. The only times that we have been asked to weigh our bags on the big scale at security is when the plane is full. If they don’t ask, we know that the plane is not full! So they’re not consistent with their checks. I saw passengers with three pieces of hand luggage last week, laptop, handbag and small suitcase. The one time we were ‘’overweight’’ by 1.5kg the check in lady told us to fill our coat pockets! We did and when we got through the check in and security, we put it all back into our hand luggage…the mind boggles…

I flew back to Italy from the UK a few weeks ago and although I was well sorted with everything in my hand luggage or wearing on my body, pockets etc, there was a very smart Italian lady who was distraught because she had a designer handbag as her hand luggage and had bought a bottle of whisky to take home to her husband and the ryanair person was giving her grief and telling her that if she could not get the bottle in her handbag it would be 35 Euros. I saved the day by lending her my spare Marks and Spencer cloth carrier bag which happily took handbag and bottle inside! I got a full blown glare from ryanair, but the lady was very grateful! She was watched all the time that she was on the plane to make sure she did not take everything out of the bag and was only able to give it back to me when we had gone past passport control at Ancona!You would think they got a bonus payment for every excess charge they extracted out of people!

My partner's mother flew Ryanair from Eindhoven about three weeks ago. On check-in, she was carrying a few bottles of medication in a plastic carrier bag long with a small handbag. When the Ryanair counter staff told her she would have to pay for a second item of hand-luggage, she simply put the handbag in the carrier bag and the "problem" (which could only have ever existed in the mind of a cretin or someone working on commission) disappeared. On the other hand, she feels very positive about Pescara Ryanair staff since a nice young man on the check-in counter gave her a priority boarding card the last time she flew out of there. Of course, since she's only in her mid-seventies and has only minor mobility problems, she decided not to use it and offered it instead to a "poor old lady" she met in the waiting room. Al

Whilst this posting has nothing to do with Italy it still sticks in my mind. Nine years ago I was flying from Jomosom, on the Nepalese/Tibetan border to Kathmandhu. I had been trekking for 6 weeks and had a Swiss Army knife in my bag for the hold. There was a thorough examination of ALL bags and my knife was removed as a hazard, even though it was destined for the hold, as I walked out of the check in room and out on to the runway area my knife was courteously returned to me to carry on the plane!!!!! Brian

Just got home, having flown from Rimini to Liverpool. All hand luggage was weighed. The lady doing it was very fair, 'the missus' was over, she transferred stuff to my bag which was now 1kg over and 'the missus' was still 1.5 Kg up,the nice lady let us go. Thanks Ryanair Rimini.

We are flying out of Bournemouth on Sat with the lovely Ryanair. I will be making sure that our hand luggage is just under 10kgs. My coat pockets will be full as well!!

I did 4 ryan air flights last week (STN - Bari via Bergamo and rtn.) Sometimes hand luggage was carefully weighed and excess demanded off those who were overweight (even when the bags were much too big to fit in the frame), and in other places it was size that was tested, regardless of the weight. No logic of course. Of course the staff are on a bonus for extracting more money out of us!

We flew back from Ancona 6th april - our 1 suitcase was 2 kilos over so we moved a few things into hand luggage. My wife got called over for her hand luggage to be weighed - it was the bigger of our 2 "handcases". As mostly it contained 2 big easter eggs it was well within the 10k limit - luckily they didn't ask to weigh mine!! In future I think I'll wear cycling tops for the journey (they're not all multicoloured lycra) which have 3 big pockets in the back which I'm sure will carry several kilos of stuff ....