Ryanair’s latest fee: You don’t want to know

Pick a card, any card, to pay for your next flight? At Ryanair, it could cost you.

The Dublin, Ireland-based budget airline announced a new fee that I pray never catches on in the U.S. or elsewhere. Starting Nov. 1, the airline plans to charge 6 pounds (about $9.50) for each leg of a ticket paid for with anything other than its own MasterCard Debit Card. So that’s 12 pounds for a round-trip flight.

This is the latest charge to add to Ryanair’s string of fees already in place -- checking bags, priority boarding, etc. And remember, this is the airline that once considered charging a bathroom fee too.

Columnist Ed Perkins at SmarterTravel offers these words of warning about potential copycats:

“Ryanair is, as many of you know, the undoubted world ‘hate this airline’ champion, which has originated many of the fees that other lines subsequently adopted. Fortunately, not many North Americans will have to cope with this fee on Ryanair. But Ryanair’s bad ideas all too often wind up on other airlines.”

Add my voice to those who think this is a terrible idea -- not that it will do any good.