As a previous fairly caustic critic of Ryanair, I have to acknowledge that on Sunday 9th May they performed as well as any other airline in getting us home to Luton from Murcia.
There had been nothing on the English TV channels about ash cloud problems and we drove off on Sunday not knowing of any potential problem.
On arrival the flight was showing as delayed and nothing on the ground.
Shortly thereafter a bmibaby to Cardiff arrived, loaded and departed while we formed a queue out onto the tarmac where our flight awaited. The scrum was busier than usual and instead of what we thought was a partially full flight it turned out to be packed.
On enquiring of our seatmate, we then found that all flights on Saturday had been cancelled through Northern Spain airspace, so any spare seats were made available to any who turned up. He and his family were originally on the Stansted flight but had made it aboard and sensibly had made contingency plans as to who of them were the priority to get home and how..
That seems to encapsulate the problem. Many seem to run around like headless chickens looking for someone to blame and demand compensayshun, rather than thinking through a contingency plan.
We knew about the initial eruption and possibility of further disruption. We did check but no general announcement was on TV news that we saw on the Saturday, nor we were contacted by Ryanair.
We had, however, talked to our car parking company at time of booking about what they would do if we couldn't get back in time, so we knew what costs involved, same with car rental company if we needed to retain the car for longer. We arranged with the apartment as well so if necessary we could return and how long for. We had email and phone contacts in case they were needed.
Had we been asked, we could have therefore given up our seats, but obviously not everyone has contingency plans in place.
As it was, we had no problems, 30 minute delay reduced to 12 by time of landing, and everyone accepted the situation with as good grace as possible.
So, efficiently handled, Ryanair got as many people home as possible. Well done. They might review if there are any improvements they can make, but I'm sure they only have a limited amount of staff and too many people to try and contact.