A story rumbling around in the background of the festive season has been Ryanair’s row with the Italian government over ID requirements on its Italian domestic services. The airline is threatening to stop domestic flights in Italy from 23rd January amid a dispute with the country’s authorities over new rules on ID documents that passengers must show before boarding. Last month, Italy’s civil aviation authority ordered all airlines to accept driving licences, government badges and hunting licences amongst other documents to identify passengers at boarding gates for domestic flights. Ryanair responded that the documents on the government list were less secure and threatened flight security. Ryanair says that because it operates a near 100% online check-in system, passengers are asked at booking time to show their passport or identity card before boarding. BusinessWeek has the full story.
So what is going on here? It would be entirely true to form if a substantial part of the Italian civil aviation authority’s motivation is to defend the position of Italy’s own airlines – all of whom would happily accept your DVD rental card as valid ID. But what of Ryanair’s selflessness? Some might say that its stringent ID requirements, required by the airline wherever it operates, have actually quite a lot to do with stopping individuals reselling surplus tickets through auction sites, and companies bulk-buying cheap tickets months in advance on routes frequently flown by their employees.
Whatever the motivation it could get nasty. Both sides in the Italian row seem to be digging in, and Ryanair’s Italian network is fairly substantial.
In other Ryanair news it was amusing to see the UK’s OFT chief slamming the airline’s fees for online card payments as “puerile”. If the OFT honcho fully appreciated the attractions of the prepaid debit card that Ryanair will accept without fee, he might have been a little more charitable.
