Ryanair is joining easyJet in offering paid for benefits for frequent flyers. The new scheme launching later this year will see Ryanair offering a host of benefits usually provided on a paid for basis for a fixed yearly price.

Currently, passengers on Europe’s largest have to pay for extras such as priority boarding and allocated seating. However, this is all set to change. For €199 per year, passengers will be entitled to these benefits plus more on all their Ryanair flights.

Ryanair Choice

The program is set to be named Ryanair Choice. It appears to be marketed as a flat price of 199, meaning that it will cost €199 or £199 despite €199 being worth around £175. With this, passengers receive:

• Priority Boarding;
• Fast Track Airport Security (where available);
• An allocated standard seat;
• 10kg Checked Luggage.

These would usually set a passenger back around £30 per leg when booked individually. As such, this program could provide serious benefits to Ryanair regulars, however, probably isn’t for the occasional Ryanair flyer.

100,000 Target

When the program goes live at the end of the summer, anybody will be able to join for the program for the appropriate fee. If you were commuting once a week via Ryanair, you could potentially save around £2921 as opposed to buying these services each time.

In the first year of the program, which is similar in nature to “easyJet Plus”, Ryanair hopes to sign up 100,000 passengers. This could be lucrative for Ryanair as most of the services cost very little, if anything, to provide. In fact, assuming each passenger used Great British Pounds to pay, this would net the carrier a sweet £20,000,000. However, is the target too ambitious?

Will It Be A Success?

100,000 is an ambitious membership target. In January alone, the airline carried 10m passengers. While 100,000 seems like an absurdly high figure, it could work out for the carrier. This would account for just 1% of Ryanair’s entire traffic for January. Now scale this across the year, and that number becomes even smaller.

It’s difficult to say at this stage how successful this program will be. With the right marketing, it could be a huge hit. However, we have no idea if Ryanair would rather the profits from selling the extras on an as needed basis.

Would you buy Ryanair Comfort? Let us know in the comments down below