Stranded Ryanair passengers had to hire bus to get home
 

STRANDED Ryanair passengers were forced to hire a bus and drive 600 miles home after their flight was cancelled and they were told that the next aircraft out of a French airport would be in 10 days.

The 51 holidaymakers, led by a Belgian window cleaner, clubbed together to rent a vehicle for €4,000 after the no-frills airline announced their flight from Carcassonne, France, to Charleroi airport, Brussels, would not bereplaced.

The passengers, mostly Belgians but including five Britons and 15 Germans, were told upon arriving at the airport last week that their flight to Charleroi had been cancelled due to bad weather. Their aircraft had been diverted to nearby Perpignan during a storm and there was no time to transfer them to that airport before the plane made the return journey, empty, the company said.

"They abandoned us there as if we were dogs," said Gauthier Renders, the 28-year-old window cleaner from Brussels. "There were children there and even an old woman with a walking stick. They didn't even give us a glass of water. At the Ryanair desk they said there were no available flights before September 15. Everything was fully booked.

"They said that some of us could get home via Gerone in Spain but that was 200 miles away and there were only 15 places available. They also said they wouldn't pay for us to get there. So I looked for a bus in the Yellow Pages and we were on the road by 9pm."

The bus company provided two drivers and, after a 16-hour drive, the coach arrived in Belgium, on Tuesday.

"They don't care about the bad publicity; they know they are a cheap airline and that people will use them again just because they are cheap. But not me: my wife and I will never fly Ryanair again," Mr Renders said.

He added: "I collected the names and numbers of the other passengers and as soon as I got back I phoned my lawyer. I thought we could take them to court, but he said there was not much point as some people only paid €5 and the legal fees would be much higher than that."

David Gering, Ryanair's commercial director in Belgium, said: "Ryanair is the company which cancels the fewest flights in Europe, though we do occasionally have to due to technical problems or bad weather. In the case of a cancellation our policy is to reimburse or offer a seat on the next available flight."

A spokesman for Charleroi airport said: "The subsequent flights were all fully booked and Ryanair did not want to spend the money sending a replacement aircraft."

Yeah, but other airlines do their best to get passengers to their destinations after flights are cancelled!!

Hi Wiz...

True, but the lowcosts have re-invented the old saying "you gets what you pay for"?

MOL would (and frequently does) argue that by offering a flight to destination, even in 10 days time, he is meeting his half of the arrangement.

If passengers aren't happy with to travel on that basis go with another airline... I personally would never fly RYR for that very reason.

Ryanair
 

People need to realise that low-cost carriers are great until something goes wrong.
Ryanair make no secret of the fact that if pax want low fares then they get a low service. If you dont want to run the risk of getting stranded fly with a more reputable carrier. People should stop moaning about it.
Ryanair wouldnt give you the steam off their own p***

Doesn’t matter what fare a passenger pays the airline should have a duty of care and that duty of care should be reflected in their airfares. MOL doesn’t give a fig about his staff or his passengers and never will. All he is interested in is counting his shares and making sure his wage cheque goes in every month. I thought the EEC brought out new laws about this sort of thing?

They did, but I think that Ryanair would have a "get-out" under the "events beyond their control" clause.

Because MOL is directly responsible for the weather? LOCO is exactly what you get. Maybe before people check the terms and conditions button on the website, they should read them?

TIO

I'm just a Johnny Passenger - never been in the airline/travel business so I have no axe to grind re particular airlines.

I have never flown with Ryanair, simply because (up to now) they only fly to DUB from my local airport and I have never had cause to use that route.

I have used easyJet quite a lot though. I will briefly describe a situation that occurred at Inverness last Friday.

We were due to return to BRS with easyJet in early afternoon but an unquantified delay appeared against the flight. I feared the worst. The INV easyJet agent (Servisair?) was very helpful and we were told within an hour of scheduled arrival that the aircraft was on its way from BRS with the inbound to INV.

We arrived back at BRS only seventy minutes late on an easyJet A 319 that had been 'scrambled' from Stansted and sent to BRS to pick up the Scotland-bound pax. I later learned that the scheduled aircraft, a BRS-based 737-700, had gone to Pisa on its first flight of the day and suffered a long tech delay at the Italian airport.

I thought easyJet performed admirably in getting a replacement a/c so quickly. It shows that lowcost airlines can provide first class service even in the face of adversity.

What rights would the Ryanair pax have had under the EEC rules?

I presume they wouldn't have got the 250 euros compensation as the initial cause was arguably outwith Ryanairs control.

Would they still have been entitled to accomodation and meals for the ten days if they choose to wait for the alternative flights offered?

I quite understand that Ryanair are thumbing their nose at the new EC compensation regulations at the moment in a legal manner that they feel they can get away with.

Can't quite understand why the CAA, responsible for consumer regulation in the UK, don't also work to the rules with Ryanair if they choose to do this. Taking all their paperwork apart for a few hours for each flight before departure would start to make the point. All completely legal and within their rights, of course.

Did FR really do this?
 

It seems pretty extreme to me, but this is from The Sunday Independent (Ireland):

"STRANDED Ryanair passengers were forced to hire a bus and drive 600 miles home after their flight was cancelled and they were told that the next aircraft out of a French airport would be in 10 days.

The 51 holidaymakers, led by a Belgian window cleaner, clubbed together to rent a vehicle for €4,000 after the no-frills airline announced their flight from Carcassonne, France, to Charleroi airport, Brussels, would not be replaced.

The passengers, mostly Belgians but including five Britons and 15 Germans, were told upon arriving at the airport last week that their flight to Charleroi had been cancelled due to bad weather. Their aircraft had been diverted to nearby Perpignan during a storm and there was no time to transfer them to that airport before the plane made the return journey, empty, the company said.

"They abandoned us there as if we were dogs," said Gauthier Renders, the 28-year-old window cleaner from Brussels. "There were children there and even an old woman with a walking stick. They didn't even give us a glass of water. At the Ryanair desk they said there were no available flights before September 15. Everything was fully booked.

"They said that some of us could get home via Gerone in Spain but that was 200 miles away and there were only 15 places available. They also said they wouldn't pay for us to get there. So I looked for a bus in the Yellow Pages and we were on the road by 9pm."

The bus company provided two drivers and, after a 16-hour drive, the coach arrived in Belgium, on Tuesday. "They don't care about the bad publicity; they know they are a cheap airline and that people will use them again just because they are cheap. But not me: my wife and I will never fly Ryanair again," Mr Renders said.

He added: "I collected the names and numbers of the other passengers and as soon as I got back I phoned my lawyer. I thought we could take them to court, but he said there was not much point as some people only paid €5 and the legal fees would be much higher than that."

David Gering, Ryanair's commercial director in Belgium, said: "Ryanair is the company which cancels the fewest flights in Europe, though we do occasionally have to due to technical problems or bad weather. In the case of a cancellation our policy is to reimburse or offer a seat on the next available flight."

A spokesman for Charleroi airport said: "The subsequent flights were all fully booked and Ryanair did not want to spend the money sending a replacement aircraft."


So is this one for the new EU compensation law, or are FR above all that?

The only people who praise Ryanair are those who have never experienced a severly delayed or cancelled flight with them!

Indeed, you get what you paid for, OR DO YOU? Sure, some pax paid peanuts for their flight, but many will have paid much higher fares (some in the hundreds of Euros)!

You have a choice I guess. Mine is: I don't fly Ryanair.

I had a flight cancelled on me on FR out of Rodez once (ATC strike related) - they got me on a flight out of Carcassonne the next day - no extra charge.

It's fashionable to knock them, and only th enegative stories make the headlines - but I've used them a lot and had only good service.

Would travel insurance help in these circumstances?.

Says who? Got some evidence for that? Give us a link.

You can't - 'cos its utter bolloxolgy - a FR management speciality.

More evidence.
 

If you would like to research a bit more on Ryanair you can also view the following threads, this will give you an idea of how pilots and Management feel, you can read their ideas and how well the are working together as a team:

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthr...20#post2086620

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthr...5&pagenumber=9


Definitely a success story!
:confused:

Ok, time to get my calculator out again:

Let's say:

Average difference between Ryanair's fares and other airlines:

€50 return

This is very conservative, considering we are talking about Brussels here!

Chance of Ryanair flight being cancelled:

(Less than) - 1%

Costs to passengers of getting their own bus, and let's say one lost working day?

Bus - €100
Day's work - €100

Total "cost" of delay - €200

Total cost x chance of actually happening:

€200 x 1% = €2

Less cost of not using Ryanair:

€2 - €50 = -€48

Conclusion: Large numbers of passengers choose Ryanair.

By all means question any of the figures above for a LEISURE passenger, but considering the origin and destination quoted, I don't really think MOL will be worried about a bus load of displaced passengers. I'll gladly bet a Ryanair flight that half of them will still be booking with them next year anyway.

Fair play to them for clubbing together and getting a bus. Good teamwork. But if they'd kept that to themselves, they wouldn't have created the story. Whoever called the journo has just given Ryanair another $xx,000 worth of free publicity.

Moral of the story - if you don't like Ryanair's ways, don't book with them. But if you do choose to get outraged by them, keep your rantings to yourself, and don't be surprised that many millions of others will still use them.

Insult 1% of your customers and keep the other 99% happy - nothing really that different in Ryanair's policy compared to the poets in Roman times. Both had a very good track record for putting bums on seats.



PS - Runway 31 - yes, a good travel insurance policy will, IIRC, put pax on another flight. Pay with some Amex cards and you'd get a night in a hotel and a free meal, but surprise surprise FR don't take Amex.

Er, excuse me, but what jurisdiction does the UK CAA have over an Irish company flying Irish-registered aircraft from a French to a Belgian airfield? Probably nil.

Cheers,
The Odd One

Just a small point but it wasnt that there no flights its just they were all full for the next ten days. Not good for the stuck punters but FR must be doing something right if every flight is packed. People vote with their feet and their pocket.

Odd one:

Quite so in this case. But the last time there was a hoopla over this happening it was on a CIA-STN flight (returning UK pax told next flight in 11 days time).

Ryanair's largest hub is of course at London Stansted. I'm guessing Stansted accounts for 25% of their flights and 75% of their profits. Their practices are relevant to the UK regulator.

I don't believe that for a minute. FR flights are not usually "sold out". They're "full", as in "the few remaining seats will now sell for EUR 299.00 + tax".
These "Aunt Siobhan has died and I MUST attend the funeral tomorrow"-fares is where most of the profit is for FR. So why give these valuable seats to those who have already paid? Not like MOL at all.:E

From the news story :

Checked CCS-CRL today (13 September, afternoon)

Tomorrow 14 Sept : seats available EUR 159 single
Day After 15 Sept : seats available EUR 159 single

As the story was about an event a week ago or so, I am presuming there were available seats in the intervening days as well. But maybe they just "weren't available" at the fares those stranded passengers had paid. Does Ryanair's interpretation of rebooking only run to seats at the original inventory price the passenger has paid ?

Typical waffle. McDonalds is a company and I'd wager it cancells fewer flights than FR- the low cancellations airline.

I don't think this is that unusual an occurence. Happened to us in Rome in June.

Turned up at check in - told the flight was on time (it hadn't left UK!!) and told to go through to departures. The screen said that it was on time though 2 Stansted deps. were running hours late. Then within a period of 30 minutes it showed a 1 hour delay for PWK then a 3 hour delay then 'cancelled'. No PA, no Ryanair staff to explain - no reason given. Same thing for the Paris flight.

After a near riot at the ticket desk passengers were offered the option of a refund or a flight to Stansted. One elderly travel organiser had a group of 20 pensioners all over seventy and 3 in wheelchairs - hadn't a clue what he was going to do at 10.30pm with no more buses back to Rome.

We took the Stansted option and phoned a colleague in the UK to organise tickets on Ryanair stansted -prestwick - cost £43 each.

When we got to Stansted a few hours later, we saw 4 women who'd also taken the same route opton from Rome, totally distraught at the Ryanair ticket desk after being told that a flight onwards to Prestwick would now cost £285 each!!

I later learned, through a friend, that the reason for the cancellation was that the 'wind had changed at Ciampino Airport' and that a different runway was in use which restricted the number of take-offs per hour.

Interestingly enough, Easyjet pax at the same airport were bussed to Fiumicino airport a few miles away. Obviously Ryanair would not pay the presumably higher landing fee.

Business or not, it's a hell of a way to treat human beings!!

There are a couple of ways that you could try to put a stop to these activites by Ryanair. Firstly, start a consumer campaign to get everyone to stop using Ryanair. They will then be forced to change their conditions of use to attract pax back.

Secondly, you could put pressure on the Irish Government to make Ryanair change their conditions of use.

Thirdly, you could try putting pressure on the UK government to remove Ryanair's 5th freedom, actually it's 7th freedom, to operate to'from the UK.

7th freedom - a service between state B and state C operated by airline of state A - a "free-standing fifth freedom".

It is effectively what Ryanair are doing out of UK airports - I don't know what proportion of their traffic starts or stops in Ireland but I bet it's a small percentage.

Are we saying that passengers need saving from themselves and don't know what they're getting themeselves into when they book Ryanair?They have to positively accept the conditions of use, after all. The consumer legislation recently enacted doesn't seem to have had any effect in this area, so far. Perhaps it needs a test court case to sort it out.

Otherwise, you could just let them get on with it!

TheOddOne

5th/7th Freedom Rights
 

Are these rights not irrelevant if the airline and airfields involved are all in EC Member States? If so, the UK government can do nothing to halt Ryanair's activities.