Ryanair - routes, schedules, incidents and issues (merged posts)

[whole diary]

[Chris from Nailsea]

From the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

Grieving family's 'turmoil' over Ryanair policy

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Sophie Taylor and her father, Peter Watkins, said they would not use the airline again

A family said they were shown a lack of empathy by Ryanair following a bereavement.

Sophie Taylor, from Chudleigh, Devon, purchased two tickets with the airline in October 2024 as part of a package holiday to Lanzarote for her mum Sharon Watkins' 60th birthday celebration.

Sadly, her mother died in August, two months before the holiday was due to take place. When Ms Taylor requested to change the name on her mother's ticket to her father's name, she was told she would have to pay a €115 (£100) name change fee.

Ryanair said it offered Ms Taylor the option to change the name on payment of the fee.

Ms Taylor bought the holiday through Love Holidays, and was due to fly from Bristol on 2 October with Jet2holidays and return a week later with Ryanair.

She said both Love Holidays and Jet2holidays were "absolutely amazing and waived the admin fees" for the name change, but Ryanair did not.

Love Holidays said in the event of a medical issue or bereavement, its policy is to waive its usual amendment fees. Jet2Holidays have been approached for comment.

She added she submitted an online complaint to Ryanair, which included photographs of the death certificate, but the airline responded with a "generic message" which said it was policy and the payment would be needed.

Ms Taylor said: "On top of losing the most important woman in my life, I didn't need to be told by a generic message that they wanted more money. My whole world came crashing down when I lost my mum, but to have that on top of everything else was just awful."

Her father Peter Watkins said his wife had suffered with neuroendocrine cancer for about 12 years before her death in August. "Lanzarote Puerto Del Carmen was a special place, somewhere we visited some 15 or 16 times, so the return for myself and Sophie was somewhat very mixed emotions", he said.

Mr Watkins travelled with his daughter to Lanzarote but decided not to cancel his wife's return seat to prevent it from being resold, instead booking a separate seat on the same flight for £52. He said: "You don't need that emotional turmoil, as you are already in emotional turmoil".

Ryanair said the package was sold by Love Holidays as a non-refundable promotional fare and recommended customers take out travel insurance. The airline added that as the original passenger had died, the family could apply for a full refund.

[ChrisB]

That's what travel insurance is exactly for?

[grahame]

From ]The Metro

Ryanair has refused to refund man unable to fly out to Austria to watch a football match after sustaining injuries in the Huntingdon train stabbing.

The famously uncompromising Irish low cost airline told 61-year-old Stephen Crean he should’ve taken out insurance to be reimbursed for his flight.

Mr Crean was one of 11 passengers on an LNER^» (London North Eastern Railway - about) train to London taken to hospital after he was stabbed seven times while trying to confront the knifeman.

He was forced to cancel an awaited trip to see his side Nottingham Forest take on Austrian team Sturm Graz in the Europa League on Thursday.

[ChrisB]

That's *exactly* why you do take out travel insurance. It wasn't Ryanair's fault....

[grahame]

That's *exactly* why you do take out travel insurance. It wasn't Ryanair's fault....

Indeed, and I was very tempted to start a poll here to see what the private view or forum members is / was on this, outside the emotional and politically correct response that those of us who keep an eye on our profile have to consider when we post in public.

Logic is that you if have a cancellations policy - and Ryanair is certainly tight, and much more publicised than most - you really should as a business stick to it, balanced only by an element of easing up in extreme cases.  Those, however, create precedents which you may be very reluctant to do.   And Ryanair's long standing stance is almost an act of corporate bravery.

I don't know how much the unrefunded flight costs (one each way?  Travelling with friends / are they still going?) are - but there are also hotel and match costs probably paid already or committed too - and all the extra costs of being injured.   Thank goodness I am not (and I hope never will be) in the situation, but I would imagine that in the circumstance I might shrug off the loss of an airline ticket.

I - drift - onto rail ticket refunds and delay/repay which in many ways is a crude form of insurance / compensation.  It makes sense if it encourages the TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) (should than now be TOPSOs - Train Operating Public Sector Organisations) to actually provide the service they are supposed to, but yet for some customers it's almost a gamble/game to choose regularly failing services to get lower or no cost travel, and in many ways it's an insurance that it could be argued should be separated out. Should the usual annual price rise be optional next year, and people who chose to pay in do so for the benefit of insurance in the form of delay/repay?

Personal thoughts and questions posted ... no easy answer available ...

[John D]

Ryanair is (in)famously strict, but I guess if you offer non refundable with option of either insurance or higher price with refunds, then if customer chooses to accept risk to save money, then they shouldn't really declare unfair if they then want to cancel.

[ChrisB]

When an annual travel policy can be generally got for less than £(3 figures), it makes sense even if you travel a couple of times annually....

[Mark A]

****snip****
insurance
****snip****

Was there a time when the railway was very keen to upsell insurance (for an individual journey by rail) and does anyone know of a web resource with details of the way that was done? (Web searches return a metric tonne of the modern day equivalent...)

Mark

[rogerw]

My memory suggests you could buy it from the booking office with your ticket

[stuving]

My memory suggests you could buy it from the booking office with your ticket

You may be right, but I doubt you can remember this - from The Era, 30 July 1854:

CRYSTAL PALACE. -  RAILWAY travellers may obtain tickets of insurance against railway accidents for the journey, on payment of 1d, 2d, or 3d, by inquiring of the booking clerks at all the principal railway stations, when they take a railway ticket. Railway Passengers' Assurance Office, 3, Old Broad-street, London.
William J, Vian, secretary.

Later, this business expanded outside rail travel, and was claiming to be the world's largest travel accident insurer. Its insurance was still being offered  by railway companies in their booking offices under grouping. After the usual mergers, associations, and takeovers, it was owned by the North British and Mercantile in the 1940s, and its name disappeared in the 60s when it was part of Commercial Union.

BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) would presumably have had some other arrangement - best looked for in those interminable front pages of the timetable book?

[didcotdean]

Booking clerks used to get 10% of the insurance fee, but most railway companies didn't  allow them to actively suggest it as they didn't want any likelihood of accidents being raised.

A stranger late Victorian rail life insurance method was to carry the current edition of "Tit-Bits", as the publisher would pay out £100 on death.

[Chris from Nailsea]

From the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

Ryanair plane at Stansted Airport was badly damaged in crash near runway

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A commercial aircraft suffered "significant damage" when it smashed into an airport fence with 181 passengers onboard, an investigation has revealed.

The Ryanair plane was being moved by a tug driving instructor who was advising a trainee at London Stansted Airport in Essex on 21 August 2024. The Boeing 737 was being pulled to the airport's apron - where planes await runway departure slots - by the ground vehicle known as a tug.

Changes to ground markings had been made since the incident, the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB^▸ (Air Accident Investigation Branch)) said in a report.

The tug was initially driven by a trainee, who handed control over to her instructor after a mistake. The instructor "continued to reassure and advise the trainee" while performing a manoeuvre, "looking at her while doing so", the report added.

But the plane's nosewheel moved beyond the tug release point (TRP) ground markings - where it was meant to stop - resulting in the aircraft striking a blast barrier. This damaged the rear of the plane, which also had six crew onboard and was bound for Venice in Italy, but caused no injuries.

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The rear of the aircraft suffered significant damage in the crash

Following the crash, the instructor successfully passed drug and alcohol tests. The man explained he was "focusing on speaking to the trainee" when he drove past the TRP, the report said. He added the markings were "not very prominent" and were "obscured" underneath the plane.

The trainee said she did not say anything when her instructor failed to stop as she was "assuming he must have known what he was doing", the report stated.

The manoeuvre was carried out by workers for Blue Handling, a ground handling team from facility management provider ABM that serves Ryanair at Stansted. ABM was approached for a comment by PA^▸ (Public Address (broadcast loudspeaker announcements) or Passenger Assist (railway staff providing physical assistance to passengers with mobility issues), depending on context) Media.

Since the accident, the airport doubled the length of TRPs from 50cm (19.6ins) to 1m (3.2ft), and painted them on both sides of centre lines.

[Witham Bobby]

... it smashed into an airport fence with 181 passengers onboard ...

I bet the 181 passengers were glad they remained sitting on the fence, rather than being on board that plane

[Chris from Nailsea]

I have posted this before, here on the Coffee Shop forum, but it's a light-hearted spoof advert for Ryanair, from YouTube, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp4yczeiXwY

Watch until the end of the 70 seconds clip: it rather seems to sum it all up quite neatly. 

(With my apologies to any possibly younger readers here for the one sweary word).

[Chris from Nailsea]

From the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

Man nearly sucked out of window mid-air on Ryanair plane, passengers say

A passenger was reportedly nearly sucked out of a cabin window in mid-air on a Ryanair plane.

Witnesses told local media the man, said to be a Serbian citizen in his 60s, was left hanging head first out of the window as far as his shoulders for several minutes, before other passengers on the flight managed to pull him back inside.

In a statement, Ryanair said its Friday morning flight from the Greek city of Thessaloniki to Germany's Memmingen returned "shortly after take-off when a passenger window dislodged inflight".

It continued: "The aircraft landed normally and passengers returned to the terminal. One passenger requested and received medical assistance on the ground in Thessaloniki."

The Irish budget airline added that "a replacement aircraft was arranged to bring passengers to Memmingen" several hours later.

Media reports in Greece and Germany quoted passengers describing a loud bang followed by the window breaking and oxygen masks falling from the ceiling shortly after the Boeing 737 had taken off. They believe the window was smashed by pieces of the jet's engine - although Ryanair has not commented on this.

"We immediately realised there had been a decompression. There were screams... for a moment I thought someone had accidentally opened the emergency door," Christina, a fellow passenger, told Radio Thessaloniki. The masks dropped and there was a strong smell. The head and shoulders of one passenger were outside the window. Fortunately, he hadn't taken off his seat belt."

The aircraft - believed to have been an 18 year-old-plane - was operated by Ryanair's subsidiary Malta Air.

The Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) later told the BBC that it "is aware of the incident involving a Ryanair group aircraft, registered and operated by Malta Air, departing Thessaloniki this morning.  The IAA will provide any requested assistance to the aviation safety investigation authority in Greece and the Maltese Civil Aviation Directorate, to aid their investigation," it said.

In 2018, a passenger died when debris from a damaged engine caused a window to break on a Southwest Airlines flight in the US, and she was partially sucked out.