Ryanair has revealed new reduced checked bag fees (and increased check-in bag sizes) to encourage more customers to check in bags and reduce the number of customers with two bags at the boarding gates.

The carrier argues too many customers are currently using its improved two free carry-on bags service, and with high load factors there is not enough overhead cabin space for this volume of carry-on bags.

The situation is causing boarding/flight delays, Ryanair said.

To encourage more customers to check-in some bags and reduce the volume of carry-on bags, Ryanair will introduce the following bag policy changes on all flights from November:

• The check-in bag allowance will increase from 15 to 20 kilogrammes for all bags.
• The standard check-in bag fee will be cut from €/£35 to €/£25 for this bag.
• Only Priority Boarding customers will be allowed to bring two carry-on bags on the aircraft.
• All other (i.e. non-priority) customers will only be allowed to bring one smaller carry-on bag on board the aircraft, while their second (bigger) wheelie bag must be placed in the hold (free of charge) at the boarding gate.

Ryanair spokesman Kenny Jacobs said: “These bag policy changes will cost Ryanair over €50m per annum in reduced checked bag fees.

“However, we believe offering bigger bags at reduced fees will encourage more customers to consider checking-in a bag, which will reduce the high volume of customers we have with two carry-on bags at the boarding gates, which is causing flight delays due to large numbers of gate bag and cabin bag offloads.

“We hope that by restricting non-priority customers to one small carry-on bag – their wheelie bag must be placed in the hold, free of charge at the boarding gate – this will speed up the boarding of flights and eliminate flight delays being caused by not having sufficient overhead cabin space on busy flights to accommodate over 360 carry-on bags.

“These lower bag fees and increased bag size allowances will come into play for all bookings for travel after November, and we hope our customers will enjoy the savings of our new simplified bag policy.”