Up to now, passengers booking seats with a Ryanair flight would not be charged if they used a Visa Electron card. However, that has now changed, with the airline now deferring charges to users of Mastercard Prepaid cards. Every other booking made on a card will be charged a £5 per person administration fee. According to the UK Cards Association, there are about 1.7 million people who have a Visa or Mastercard prepaid card in the UK.

Ryanair’s Stephen McNamara commented on the change of policy: “Mastercard Prepaid cards are widely available across Europe from financial institutions and online.”

Currently, Visa Electron cards can be used at the following airlines without charges… Aer Lingus, BMIbaby, Easyjet and Flybe. Should the card be used at other airlines, however, a charge in the form of a flat fee transaction will be taken against the booking.

Charges made by airlines have long been a contentious subject, and the Advertising Standards Authority and Office of Fair Trading both state that any advertised price has to include all non-optional charges.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 3:50 pm and is filed under Airlines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.