A Spanish court has ruled that RYANAIR has no right to force customers to print their own boarding passes. A judge in Barcelona said that, under international air travel conventions, Ryanair can neither demand passengers turn up at the Airport with their boarding pass, nor charge them €40 if they do not. "I declare abusive and, therefore, null, the clause in the contract by which Ryanair obliges the passenger to take a boarding pass to the Airport," Judge Barbara Cordoba said. "The customary practice over the years has been that the obligation to provide the boarding pass has always fallen on the Airline". Ryanair said that it would appeal against the decision, which threatens its model of scrapping checkin desks and replacing them with online boarding cards and Airport bag drops. "The court is wrong," said a Ryanair spokesman, who claimed that forgetting a boarding pass is almost the same as forgetting a passport. "You need the boarding card to fly. If a passenger arrives without a boarding card, we find an ad hoc solution to their problem. The €40 is a penalty for doing that. We serve the boarding card in exactly the same way that the passenger makes the booking, by internet". The spokesman went on: "If the problem is the €40 charge for this service, we'll simply stop offering the service. That, of course, will mean the passenger who arrives without a boarding card cannot fly". The case was brought by a Spanish lawyer whose online company takes legal action against Airlines on behalf of passengers. The lawyer turned up at the Airport in Girona, Spain, in May without a boarding pass for his flight to Alghero and had to pay €40.
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