nullWhy I'm not flying Ryanair again
Last October, full load of passengers in departure area of Venice Treviso, 21.00,(normally a great little airport, btw, one plane at a time and usually off the aircraft and out of the front door in <20 mins)- plane on the tarmac, engines running. Passengers wait. And wait. No information for 2 hours. Finally an announcement - due to fog, this plane will not be leaving tonight. Empty plane immediately takes off. Then a sequence of conflicting announcements - coaches will be arriving to take everyone somewhere else - coaches arrive at 1.00am - then leave empty. No explanation. Families with babies with no food etc v distressed. Facilities at tiny airport non-existent at that hour. 2.00am - announcement - a plane will be sent tomorrow morning at 11.00am. No Ryanair staff at the airport - only two very young airport staff, who struggle with increasingly anxious and angry passengers, who agree to keep airport open overnight (!)- scramble by some Ryanair passengers to find a local hotel using their mobile - most are full or not interested at that time of night. Elderly passengers trying to stretch out on the marble floor. Nowhere to buy a bottle of water or a coffee, and many younger passengers have spent their cash anyway. Speak to a local - fog at this time of year very commonplace and she can't believe this is a one-off. Take a walk outside at 3.00am - fog completely lifted, and stays clear for the rest of the night. Next morning - still no Ryanair staff at the airport. Tired and hungry passengers troop onto the plane. A single sentence of apology onboard from a teenage airhostess. Not even a cup of coffee offered as compensation. Back at Stanstead, no-one from Ryanair mentions the delay (even Railtrack apologises sometimes). My friend telephones Ryanair in London to complain - rudely told to write to Dublin. A curt 5 liner arrives 2 weeks later - the paraphrase -don't even think of trying to get compensation out of us, sucker - read the small print.
So in addition to not having any groundstaff at receiving airports, having no contingency plans for predictable poor weather, treating their customers with contempt, another list on this forum has been cataloguing a series of technical failures which appear to be happening with increasing frequency. Any of these things related, I wonder?
