I was on a Ryanair flight from Bristol to Dublin that took off during Storm Amy in October last year. It was unable to land at Dublin after two abortive attempts and was diverted to Manchester, where we sat on the plane for six hours, with no complimentary refreshments, before being unceremoniously ejected at nearly midnight.
We were told Ryanair staff would organise taxis and hotels, but no crew disembarked with us, and the terminal was deserted.
I, along with other passengers, was forced to take a taxi to a hotel for the night. There was no word from Ryanair and no flights showed as available the next day, so I took two buses back to Bristol.
The abortive trip cost me £900 but Ryanair failed to offer a ticket refund and has refused my £240 claim for the hotel and transport because it seems to have recorded the flight as having landed in Dublin.
RC, Bishop’s Tawton, Devon
Your communications with Ryanair make for surreal reading. Customer service agents first insisted that you submit your claim via the company’s online portal, which did not list your flight as cancelled or delayed.
After two weeks of this, you were suddenly told that you had been rebooked on to a Dublin flight that supposedly departed while you were still stuck in the diverted aircraft. As you failed to board this phantom flight, it claimed that you were not entitled to expenses.
In vain, you asked for the communication advising you of this replacement flight, or the number of passengers who flew on it. Ryanair merely doubled down and washed its hands of you.
Only when I questioned the airline did it decide that you had been “incorrectly advised”. It has now refunded you the cost of the flight and offered to cover your hotel and transport costs.
As for the refreshments, which airlines are obliged to provide for free if a delay exceeds two hours, it told me disingenuously that the bar was open. It later admitted that this was a paying bar. Passengers could claim back the cost via its online portal, it says, and we can all guess how that would turn out.
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