Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder coming to you from the

independent offices and therefore with a certain amount of noises off. But what a noise has been created

today on Tuesday the 15th of August by Ryanair imposing its 55 pound per passenger fee for issuing a boarding pass at the airport.

Just a reminder of the circumstances here.

Ruth and Peter Jaff, who were heading off from London's Stanssted to Bergerac in southwest France last Friday,

knew in advance that Ryanair requires passengers to check in online ahead of their travel plans.

But inadvertently, Ruth checked in for the inbound rather than the outbound journey and therefore when they turned

up at the airport the agent said you haven't checked in that's going to cost you 55 pounds each

well they were very upset by this.

Peter Jaff said we didn't have much choice.

There we were with our bags, people expecting us at the other end, so we had to pay.

And Ruth indeed observed, and this was on BBC Radio 4, people hate Ryanair, I think.

Well, I went on to social media, onto X, formerly known as Twitter, and I asked this morning,

what's your view on Ryanair imposing its 55 pounds per passenger fee for issuing a boarding pass at the airport?

And imposing it without apparently any discretion.

Well, I have been surprised by the number of votes.

Currently it's up above 5,000 and very clearly since the early stages of this self-selecting poll on what used to be Twitter,

65% say this was unfair, it was an honest mistake, whereas 35% say,

well, them's the rules, if you don't like them, fly with somebody else, or don't fly at all. Now, I can absolutely understand the couple's anger. They come from a generation

where doing everything online simply wasn't part of life. And it's absolutely fair to say that

while I travel on Ryanair maybe a dozen times a year, people who aren't used to it,

maybe just fly once a year, maybe haven't flown Ryanair at all, are going to be bamboozled

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