You can add 6 to that list for Luton. Ryanair have said they will be closing some UK bases so it will all change at some point. So which UK bases are loss making?

Well worth a watch
https://investor.ryanair.com/results/fy-20-results/

Seems that Ryanair or is it their staff are threatening passengers with being blacklisted for going to their credit and debit card companies and trying to get a charge back, as they claim this is fraudulent activity. https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/ne...-fraud--and-c/

A member of staff telling somebody something wrong is sadly a normal event.

It would only become a fraudulent activity if a passenger gets a voucher, claims back from their CC company and then decides to use the voucher anyway.

Customer service people making it up is the stuff of nightmares from every employer who has ever dealth with people online.

The issue is that this is not a one off. Seems that a staff briefing has possibly taken place on how to play hardball as this has happened during phone calls and live chat. Ryanair has form when it comes to pushing their own agenda and ignoring the law.

A couple of people off their own bat deciding to make something up and go with it is not the airline doing it.

Call centres don't record calls to assist callers, the do it to ensure people follow the script they given and limit what employees claim..

Anyone know what Ryanair are up to with existing bookings ? I received an email changing my flight times on a June booking about a week ago, but the original flight times appear to be still on sale.
Edit. Now told that the flight was changed and then reinstated, but for some reason, no second email.

Travelling against government advice will void any travel insurance. The best bit is that the insurance Ryanair are selling with their tickets are also void.

which a lot of Ryanair passengers don’t buy anyway

have you got any data on that ?

Ryanair flies all over Europe, not just holiday flights. The Sun article was referring mainly to UK holidaymakers who are around 40% of Ryanair's revenue and a great many of them have their own policies and don't need to purchase the Ryanair product
Many of the Europeans flying domestically or within Europe rely on their EHIC.
quod est manifesto

The following routes start from UK airports over the next week(some even from tomorrow - Sunday 21 June):

BHX - AGP, ALC & BCN
BOH - AGP
BRS - AGP & ALC
EDI - AGP, ALC, BCN, BUD & SXF
EMA - AGP, ALC & PMI
GLA - AGP & ALC
LBA - AGP
LPL - AGP & ALC
LTN - AGP & ALC
NCL - ALC
MAN - ACE, AGP, ALC, BCN, BGY, BUD, CIA, CRL, FAO, FUE, IBZ, LIS, MAD, MXP, PMI, PRG, SXF & TFS
PIK - AGP
(Didn't count STN, but I'm sure it's the same picture)

Most other routes then return from the beginning of July

When we travel within mainland Europe we rely on EHIC (for the next 6 months anyway) don't buy the rip off that is insurance, since insurance companies policy is to avoid paying claims at all costs. The only insurance worth having is the mandatory stuff (car insurance) the the really important stuff like your house and contents.

How do I change my flight without incurring a flight change fee charge?
I am due to travel on 10th July and want to move the flight to 10th August, but both the app and website insist on charging me £35/€35...do I have to call them?

This is very bad advice. I had an EHIC card in Spain, which was invalid, as unbeknown to me a private doctor was called by the hotel receptionist. The doctor called a private ambulance who took me to a flashy private hospital. This resulted in a fat bill that the insurance company had to pay, as I didn't touch the NHS equivalent in Spain. If I had needed to be brought home on a medical flight EHIC would not cover that either.

Whether anyone has Covid 19 cover is another story so is a valid point.

I would add that we drive rather than fly. We had cause to use the German system on one occasions and cannot speak too highly of it; I have however heard second hand that the Spanish public system isn't much to be written home about. i guess it's about where you're going, and what your perception of risk is. Touch wood, we've been travelling to northern Eurore sans insurance for knocking on 15 years now, but when we've travelled further afield, and especially offshore, we do invest in travel insurance.

Terrible advice. EHIC doesn’t get you home if the worst happens.

Being flipant.....not entirely certain I'd want to come back.

I understand! 🤩

260 at risk jobs saved after Ryanair pilots agree to 20% pay cut.
A further 70 jobs still at risk with possible 4+ base closures at Leeds Bradford, Prestwick, Southend & Bournemouth.

https://www.balpa.org/Media-Centre/P...ary-pay-cuts-t

Out of 29 arrivals into TFS today 15 are Ryanair.......welcome back

Tempted for late August....... regular place I do each winter.

No new cases for umpteen days and 22 days without Covid death in Tenerife......slowly getting there.

The Canary Islands has registered 22 days without any death and only one person is being cared for in ICU in Gran Canaria.

FR just seem to be getting on with it trying to get people moving again (I know it is a commercial decision) good on them. I suspect they may be picking up not the usual FR users which must be helpful....

Mr Johnson Snr’s infamous journey was apparently with Wizz...

Any more news about the potential closure of the 4 UK bases recently talked about
I understand cabin crew have also now come to an agreement but nothing more about closing bases

This was all back in May, but news of it only released a few weeks back, was all "if's and Could's" at the time, think the agreement to take the 20% reduction by FD and CC has probably taken the heat of the possible base closures for the time being, especially as the aircraft are now back in the skies.

Make a public announcement about potentially closing UK bases, stand back, and wait for the even more generous discounts to role in from worried airports. Cleaver people at Ryanair.

A strangely apt typo! From Wikipedia "A cleaver is a large knife that varies in its shape but usually resembles a rectangular-bladed hatchet. It is largely used as a kitchen or butcher knife intended for hacking through bone." Have they hacked through the bones of the affected airports?

Divide and conquer

I today flew on EI-DAS one of the older aircraft in the fleet, and out of curiosity I was wondering why the word Ryanair was not painted on the winglet. Was the winglet retrofitted onto this aircraft or just not painted during original installation?
I flew on a newer aircraft last week and that seemed to be in a worse state both inside and outside than the older aircraft I flew on today, maybe DAS had a paint job recently?

EI-DAS was not delivered with winglets.

Beeb reports FR to close their Hahn base because staff based there wouldn't accept paycut. Any merit to FR's claim or was it the proposed paycut was deliberately severe in the hope that pilots/cabin crew would say no, and FR would have an excuse to close a base that has shrunk significantly over the last 10 years while Frankfurt's main airport, FRA, has grown ?

Lauda Europe.

The Group has announced that Laudamotion will be no more from the end of the year and will instead be subsumed into a new entity to be known and operate as Lauda Europe with a Maltese AOC resulting in the A320 fleet being re-registered from OE- to 9H.

So a second 9H- division for the Group and a blow for Austrian regulators and Austrian taxation income.

Ryanair reregistering aircraft to other countries reminds me of ship owners registering ships to Liberia that have never been to the country.

Hardly as while ship ownership and crewing is very much unregulated the aviation setctor is highly regulated across EU specifically as registration is still EU.

Bearing in mind there will be little flying this year then the "Brand value" of a legacy name may have little going forward.

Do you think the "brand" will erode that quickly?

The Lauda one, the answer is yes.

I have always been one of the first to acknowledge Ryanair for their business acumen if not always their ethics. However, their decision to penalise early-bookers in the current climate leaves me scratching my head. Surely early booking customers are valuable to an airline business: their monies paid are in the cash pool for longer which has to be a good thing for an airline. And early bookings help to underpin certainty of operation.

But Ryanair management has chosen to throw early bookers under the proverbial bus. Those who booked after June 10th are to be treated completely differently. Now - I'm not just moaning here. As a very frequent traveller with Ryanair, I hold bookings under both sets of rules. Though I can't see why it makes sense for a business to stitch-up its early-booking customers and make additional allowances only for those who booked late. Sure, the late-bookers will be well disposed to deliver repeat business, but the early-bookers will be wholly unimpressed, and their future business risks being lost entirely.

One of my (many) Ryanair bookings made for this year has just fallen foul of this two-tier policy. I had a MAN-KIR-MAN booking due to fly later this week: it was booked early. But passengers arriving in Eire are currently required by law to self-isolate for 14 days which makes this short break trip impossible to do in practice. I did not want a refund: I wanted to re-date my flights to future replacement dates when (hopefully) the Irish government will have lifted the quarantine rule.

I priced up alternative flights for 18-21 March 2021. If booking these flights afresh as a completely new booking, the price quote is £117.68 for the 'standard' rate which includes priority and two bags. So how much to CHANGE my existing August booking made on the same fare basis to these same March 2021 dates? Answer: £104 supplement over fare originally paid, which is made up of £90 change fee plus £7 and £7 for fare difference on each sector. That £90 change fee alone is actually more than the cost of the entire original booking. Now, if the supplement for the date change was limited to the £14 fare difference, I'd rebook without a second thought. But a NINETY POUNDS change fee? Come on ...

I enquired about the situation via the Ryanair Chatbox at around 14:40 yesterday and was referred to the customer service agent queue. By end of hours at 21:00 there had been no response at all.

So today I phoned Ryanair to ask them about this, as the website homepage suggests free date changes if your travel is impacted by COVID-19. I think Eire's 14-day compulsory isolation rule should fall squarely into that category. But I was told that the fee-free date change only applies to BOOKINGS MADE AFTER JUNE 10th. Why this cut-off? It makes no sense. And I do hold other bookings which will benefit from the post June 10th guarantee, by the way.

Obviously, my decision based on this is no new booking to Kerry. Why would I take the risk, when I can't forecast when the Irish Government will lift their quarantine rule anyway? And I certainly don't trust Ryanair not to stitch me up again in similar circumstances.

So here's the score. Ryanair get to keep my fare for this week's Kerry flights. Well done revenue management team: what a win!

But here's the other side of that deal. I do around 40 Ryanair sectors in a typical year. I currently hold around £400 in vouchers from flights cancelled by Ryanair themselves earlier this year. I was planning to use those to make new bookings. But not now. Not after this stitch-up. Why would I trust them with early bookings again when people who booked after June 10th have not been subjected to this stitch-up? No ... I'll now sit back and let my original money paid out to me flow back as these vouchers hit their one year anniversary dates. Beyond this, I'll continue to book Ryanair where they're the only operator on a route but choose the alternative whenever available (unless it is Air Europa who make Ryanair look like saints!). Bookings made by me (including for friends and family) generally amount to around £3000-worth of business in a typical year. I'd reckon they can forget around two-thirds of this going forward, in favour of airlines which have treated me well through this crisis. Roll of honour includes: SAS, Aer Lingus, British Airways, EasyJet, Iberia Express, Air Baltic, Austrian Airlines, Lufthansa, TAP, TAP Express, Norwegian, WizzAir (yes, they got it right too!). Still waiting on Belavia, though time is still on their side.

So the customer has plenty of more trustworthy alternatives to consider if Ryanair wishes to pursue their rip-off change-fee policy ... Why do this???

If FR don't allow some sort of changeability in tickets, there would be far fewer new bookings being made at the moment. Bookings made before 10 June are already paid - if they relax the terms now, then lots of people will defer their flights for summer 2020 to something in 2021 instead, leaving seats in S20 no longer generating revenue. Once an airline has your money, they will only relax the terms if they can't deliver their side of the contract. If they haven't got your money yet, then it is in the airline's interest to find the way to squeeze maximum revenue out of you - if that means relaxing the terms, then so be it

May not be nice, but I imagine right now FR are managing, to some extent around cashflow