At dawn on Wednesday 12 November 2025, across Europe’s major airports, Ryanair unequivocally stepped into modern digitisation.
Paper boarding passes are no longer accepted. Only digital passes stored in the Ryanair app are valid.
You can well imagine the scene. Some passengers arrive with printed passes in hand. A few airline staff politely redirect them. At certain gates, travellers pause to download the app or charge their phones.
Sure, there will be some frustration.
But this friction will fade quickly.
Within days, operations will settle into rhythm. And the change will mark a big step in air travel’s shift toward full digital maturity. The boarding pass, one of the last physical artefacts of the journey, will become fully virtual.
A wider shift in travel behaviour
The IATA Global Passenger Survey 2025 presented shows that 78% of travellers want to use one smartphone combining wallet, passport, and loyalty functions. The consumer expectation towards a mobile-first experience is undeniable.
These patterns are accurately reflective of the broader evolution of retail. Mobile is now the dominant interface for both engagement and sales. In many sectors, up to 30% of total revenue now comes through apps. A direction the airline industry is clearly following.
Ryanair’s move embodies this trend. They are now centring their strategy around their mobile app: it accelerates processes, reduces costs, and creates a single hub for travel updates, disruption management, and retail offers.
What this means for airlines
Mobile apps have become the backbone of airline retail and customer experience. As paper disappears, the app becomes the passenger’s most crucial point of contact.
While a good mobile experience is taken almost for granted in other industries, one just needs to go through App Store reviews for airline apps to get an idea of the gap that still exists between expectation and delivery.
To meet expectations, airlines need more than basic check-in functionality. They need a next-generation mobile experience that supports retail, disruption management, add-ons and personalisation in one seamless flow.
Branchspace’s promise: preparing airlines for the mobile-first era
We see this move to digital boarding passes as part of a bigger story.
That’s why we built Triplake On the Go. It’s designed for a world where the mobile app is no longer an add-on but the travel companion and the core of the airline experience. With On the Go, customers can check in, access their digital boarding pass, receive live updates and manage every stage of their journey in one place.
For airlines the app becomes a direct channel for engagement and revenue. Every notification, every update, every offer can be tailored to the traveller’s context. It’s where service and retail meet.
Triplake On the Go brings together everything that makes modern travel coherent: real-time information, intuitive design, usability, reliability and integrated retailing. It’s built to make travel effortless for passengers and commercially sound for airlines.
“Today’s travellers expect a seamless journey from booking to arrival, and every moment in between. That’s why we put users at the heart of every digital experience when designing our mobile apps. Guided by our core UX principles—clarity and simplicity, speed and efficiency, reducing friction, and personalisation—we create intuitive solutions that make travel effortless.”
—Mark Otero, Experience Design Director at Branchspace
The disappearance of paper boarding passes will accelerate this shift. Airlines that act now will define what this next phase of travel feels like: faster, simpler, and more personal. And that’s exactly what Triplake delivers, your travel companion in your pocket.
If your airline is ready to move from mobile presence to mobile excellence, let’s start the conversation.
