Whistleblowers Please!
You only have to read this forum and Skytrax for it to be blindingly obvious that Ryanair have a whole raft of dubious practices, not least of which is the determination to never have to refund a penny no matter what the circumstances are. What we need are a series of ex Ryanair employee's going to Tonight or Panorama with evidence of a systematic attempt to defraud or mislead passengers. Until they are exposed as doing this deliberately, rather than the compelling, but lacking in evidence, anecdotal stories nothing will get changed. In the US I am pretty sure there would have been a class action suit by now, particularly in the telephone scam of not allowing anyone to contact them and charging a fortune for their phone lines. Really we need legislation making it illegal for customers to have to pay a company to seek redress for complaints or grievances. It is outrageous for any company to charge customers for the priviledge of fixing problems (take note British Gas, Sky, Ryanair and other companies of dis-repute).
On the more general point about overbooking, there may be a justification for full service airlines overbooking. There is absolutely no excuse for low cost airlines doing it. A full service airline sells tickets which are fully refundable and changeable, which means that they are not able to tell which customers will show up or not as these tickets are effectively like bus tickets, allowing the passenger to take any flight they like. Therefore, it is perfectly legitimate to use past experience to manage loads and estimate total usage. These airlines also take care of the passenger who is then denied boarding for this reason.
Low cost airlines only allow you to travel on the actual flight itself, and you lose all the fare if you don't show up. Therefore, the seat has actually been sold, and it is tantamount to fraud to sell the seat again. There is no possibility that you could get on the flight, and they are in effect selling something they don't have. It would be fine to sell off "no shows" on a standby basis (similar to a theatre which sells "no show" seats after the curtain goes up); but it is totally wrong to book people for seats which don't exist, particularly as Ryanair is hostile, unco-operative and nasty to the customers who are affected. Sooner or later Ryanair will pay for this attitude to it;s customers, and it won't be long. I know many people who would rather pay £20 per sector more to go with Aer Lingus, Easyjet or BA than be abused by semi-literate morons.
Last edited by jimworcs; 24th Mar 2008 at 14:40.
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