Story from BBC news in Scotland this morning. More concerning is the fact that the luggage travelled without pax.

An Austrian airport has apologised to a Scottish family who were left "abandoned" by Ryanair after their flight to Edinburgh left without boarding disabled passengers.Katie Brown, 25, who uses a wheelchair due to cerebral palsy, along with her father Graeme and his wife Vikki, told how they were left "stranded" in Vienna on Friday without luggage or vital medication.

The family told BBC Scotland News they were left to book accommodation and an alternative flight home, leaving them thousands of euros out of pocket.

A Vienna Airport spokeswoman said "irregularities" occurred due to a failure of the airport's wheelchair service but added that the airport would fully reimburse the family for their additional costs.

The family were offered seats on the next available Ryanair flight home.

However, they were told this would not be until five days later, on New Year's Day, meaning they would miss Katie's 26th birthday celebrations on Hogmanay.

Instead, they paid for a Jet2 flight home on Sunday.

The family were initially told their Ryanair flight home had been delayed by a technical issue

The airport spokeswoman said: "Due to a failure of Vienna Airport's wheelchair service, the passengers were brought to the aircraft late, and their luggage was not offloaded. We deeply regret this incident.

"The passengers were promptly escorted by Vienna Airport staff from the departure gate to a service counter, where an alternative flight was offered at the airport's expense. However, this offer was declined by the passengers.

"Vienna Airport will fully cover the additional costs incurred due to the passengers flight rebooking and the luggage that was not offloaded."

The family, who had enjoyed a "lovely" Christmas break in the Austrian capital, said their flight home was initially delayed by two hours due to a technical fault.

They said they were escorted by airport assistance staff to a gate along with an 84-year-old solo passenger, who was also in a wheelchair.

After the staff failed to show up to board them, they were told the flight had been cancelled.

They later learned it had taken off without them and the solo passenger.

'Major security breach'

Graeme Brown told BBC Scotland News his family were given "quite an interrogation" by passport control staff when they checked in for their replacement Jet2 flight home.

He said the security system showed the family had been stamped as leaving Austria on Friday.

Mr Brown also said Jet2 staff later described the non-removal of their luggage from the Ryanair flight as "a major security breach".

According to flightstats.com the initial flight left Vienna almost two hours and 40 minutes behind schedule, and landed almost two-and-a-half hours late.

Ryanair policy states that passengers could be entitled to compensation if their flight is delayed by three or more hours.

The family said the airline denied any liability for the incident, instead blaming the airport's special assistance staff.

A spokesperson for Ryanair said: "Special assistance at Vienna Airport is provided by Vienna Airport's special assistance provider – not Ryanair.

"Unfortunately these passengers were brought to the gate late by the special assistance provider at Vienna Airport and as flight boarding was already closed these passengers missed their flight."

This is absolutely the fault of the airports assistance provider as well as the ground handling agents failing to communicate. This could have happened on any airline and unfortunately has on a number of occassions. It just happened on this occasion to be a Ryanair flight. The thing is, with the passengers most likely "boarded" into the system by the handling agents, no discrepancy on the missing passengers to bags loaded would have shown up. As its rare these days for any airline to do a seat count, the "boarding complete" message would have been passed to the dispatcher and to the crew. There are that many people that book assistance that dont actually end up requiring it, or where they only believe to require it at one end of the journey and so the crew will not have been phased as to why no assistance team came to the aircraft with customers. The assistance passengers will have been in a different location to the actual boarding gate once they had been processed. As someone who has travelled through VIE many times, i can say this is most certainly the case. Those responsibile will be very embarrassed and will need some tightening up of their procedures. However, typical media trying to make out it was entirely the airlines fault without allowing anyone to think for just a minute.

And typical of forums like Pprune to try and absolve the airline. However, just because you've outsourced the activity, you can't outsource the responsibility. The passengers contract is with the airline to transport them from A to B, and the airline failed.

Again, technically incorrect. Theres failures, but tbe outsourced companies work for a wide range of airlines and thus could have happened to anyone of them. The only way this can be resolved is with a change of procedure at this airport. I'm certain Ryanair will be scrutinising the procedure there from now on. Its highly unlikely that airlines will go back to head counting, unless requested for a particular reason. Believe it or not, it was seen as a failed procedure in itself, with constant inaccuracies. Humans will be humans afterall.

What a load of garbage. EVERY airline has the responsibility to make sure that the onboard passenger count matches what is on the load sheet. No exceptions.

Well then you have zero understanding how the operation works. The airline puts the trust in the hands of their handling agents. Yes they have the responsibility of representing their airlines and following strict procedures to ensure everything should match up. However, clearly on this occasion it didnt. Its not the first time and it certainly wont be the last time. If you think any other airlines procedures are so exclusively different here and how for example it wouldn't have happened on for example an easyJet flight on the same route, please do tell?

Which bit is incorrect? It's the airlines responsibility, no matter the reason for the the process failing. And why not do a head count, doesn't take long to walk from one end of the cabin to the other.

Almost no airlines do headcounts, unless there are actual known discrepancies where this may help. Did you not read? There was no known discrepancy with this flight until the passengers themselves realised it had actually departed without them. If you are not privy to airline and airport boarding procedures, other than having your boarding pass scanned by a gate agent, this would explain your bias. Whether right or wrong, almost all airlines jave the same procedure in place with their ground handlers. The only solution here is emsuring those assistance passengers never had their boarding cards scanned or confirmed until they actual boarded onto the aircraft. If they hadn't, this would have shown up on the boarding system as missing pax with bags attached to their names. A whole myriad of failures happened by the ground agents here - with the main one being communication. Vienna need to investigate that their assistance passenger procedure is robust enough. Moving passengers to another area away from.the boarding gate is always going to be risky.

I know how long it does to do a headcount, done loads. You've not answered my point. Why not do it? Just saying nobody does, isn't really an answer.

At the end of the day the buck stops with the airline. Anything else is just excuses.

Ok, lets put it this way so its more easy for you to be able to understand... why do a headcount when all the figures would have showed to be correct? I.e everyone they expected to be onboard, were onboard. Not every flight operates 100% full you know.

Cheeky little bugger, aren't you? :ok:

You do it as a cross check to make sure you are leaving with the right number of passengers. That's one of your basic responsibilities.

Likely at this time of year the flight would have been almost or completely full. Cazza, you don't quite get the fact that, at worst, its a Lockerbie scenario. Bags HAVE to be offloaded.

basic reason to not do one is error ratio of doing so.

an airline not Irish used to have an SOP of head counts and often a second was required as the first showed wrong, majority being crew miscount

All the EZS and EZY flights I've taken in 2024 have had headcounts before taxying. Just sayin' ...

Reported on BBC

Will be interesting if they achieve a conviction, although the amount sought seems fairly low.

I feel the outcome is somewhat academic to the overall aim. As you say the value being claimed is relatively now. I think they want the publicity of the attempt to sue with the idea being to punish one, to correct one hundred. Hoping this will rectify or temper other people's possible future misbehaviour.

it’s not the SOP to do headcounts

Ryanair calls for limit of two alcoholic drinks at airports in Europe

I doubt that they 'fail to understand ...' why airports need to make more money from passengers and who they learnt that from.

5 new routes from BRATISLAVA

Bari
Gdansk
Milan-MXP (instead of BGY)
Skiathos
Zadar

Anyone know why FR have suddenly chopped a whole host of flights from different UK bases to Morocco, Albania and Northern Ireland? My flights BHX-TIA-BHX have been cancelled in April, BHX has also lost AGA, RAK and LDY

The email states "commercial reasons" but seems very odd that so many flights from so many airports are chopped overnight (BHX-TIA was still on sale at 9pm last night)

Have FR cocked up and been told they have to operate G registered aircraft on these routes? Seems coincidental that EDI and MAN aren't affected (G registered aircraft bases)

If so I'm not particularly impressed that smacks of piss poor planning to me by FR