Ryanair trying to worm out of the court decision?

[BEagle]

All those recent profits and Ratnair is still trying to worm out of the court decision regarding its treatment of wheelchair passengers:

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30400-13247224,00.html

Quote:

WHEELCHAIR CASE APPEAL

Budget airline Ryanair is challenging a ruling that it illegally discriminated against a disabled man by charging him to use a wheelchair at an airport.

Campaigners for the disabled claimed that the judgment in January this year was a landmark case.


Bob Ross, 54, who has cerebral palsy and arthritis, was charged £18 at Stansted Airport to take him from the check-in desk to the France-bound plane in 2002.

He successfully argued that the airline should have provided a wheelchair free of charge.

Mr Ross was awarded £1,336 compensation.

Ryanair, which has taken the case to the Court of Appeal in London, has denied that it charges any wheelchair passengers for assistance.

The airline said Mr Ross was not travelling with a wheelchair and was on his way to the South of France on a £10 ticket.

The cost of providing the service was £18 - almost double the price of his ticket - which Mr Ross paid to the service provider at Stansted, not to the airline, said Ryanair.

"Ryanair strongly believes the BAA, the world's most profitable airport operator, should provide wheelchair assistance free of charge", said a Ryanair spokesman.

The airline said it was appealing, not because it had a dispute with Mr Ross, but because it wanted to force BAA Stansted to accept its responsibility to disabled passengers.

[slim_slag]

Although the quote doesn't come from the article cited it's got some interesting points in it. Looks like Ryanair have make a PR mess again, but it does appear the discriminatory charge is being levied by BAA or some other body. I guess Ryanair are just acting true to form and passing on costs of providing services additional to their core business of flying onto the end user. That attitude has revolutionised air travel in Europe to the benefit of disabled and non-disabled alike.

[bealine]

What a complete farce!!!

In Britain, since the birth of aviation, the airlines (or their handling gents) have made provision for disabled passengers at their own expense.

The BAA, as the airport operator, have a responsibility under the new Disabled Access legislation, to ensure all airport facilities may be used by disabled pax (no unnecessary obstacles to wheelchair access etc) but have absoloutely no responsibility for providing transportation services or specialised high-lifting equipment - that is down to the airline.

At Gatwick, airlines and their handling agents may use OCS or Servisair, two companies offering wheelchair and Special Passenger (Unaccompanied Minors, Blind or Deaf pax) facilities.

If Michael O'Leary wants to cream off the hand-baggage only, able bodied pax then he should get out of the aviation industry. If he's serious about aviation, then he should be forced to handle b]all[/b] pax and put his money where his over-sized facial orofice is!!!

[slim_slag]

It does seem strange to me that the airline is responsible for getting the passenger to the gate. What's this £6.70 Passenger Service Charge that Stansted levy all about then, isn't the airport being paid to provide services? Who cares what happened at the birth of aviation, things have changed, and Ryanair have driven a lot of these beneficial changes through. I think the law is an ass and Ryanair should prevail, BAA should provide this service using their profits which are made from a lot less competitive environment than Ryanair's are.

[bealine]

FYI the £6.70 service charge is an import from the USA (they started it) otherwise irreverently known as the "Toilet Tax" - the provision of which was was the reason certain US airports introduced the charge in the first place!

Unfortunately, like all other taxes in this green and not-so-pleasant land, they tend to get used for anything except the reason they were collected in the first place.

In Gatwick's case, we now have "Cato's Folly" (named after the BAA's "Gatwick Airport Limited" Managing Director) a £1.7 million structure which caused tailbacks (and pax to miss flights) during it's erection! It is an enormous archway over the South Terminal approach road proclaiming just what good value the Duty Free Shops represent!

Absoloutely farcical!!!

That having been said, Michael O'Leary, had he done his research corrrectly (which he would have done), would know that the airline is itself responsible for its disabled pax and should have costed this into his business plans. The man didn't (or chose to ignore this section of the community) and must face the consequences!

Disabled People have equal rights in the UK and it is my belief that O'Leary should face jail for his blatant disregard of these people!

[an-124]

I heard a Rumor that Ryanair was going to implement a 0.50 € charge on ALL tickets as a wheelchair / disability subsidy, passing it off as a "surcharge" due to BAA charging Ryanair for the use of wheelchairs.

This action by Ryanair forces the issue to be dealt with, and in the meantime, makes Ryanair some healthy profits.


e.g.
So instead of paying 18 GBP for 5000 disabled pax (90,000 GBP)

They charge 2 million pax 0.50€ (1 million Euros)


MOL has a point - why should Ryanair pay the charge to BAA? Why does not BAA supply them for free?

[tom de luxe]

an-124, FR are already charging all passengers on every segment what is described by the booking engine as an "Ins & Wchr Levy", a snip at GBP 2.23 / EUR 3.28. Yet - as per MOL's own words - BAA are the only airport operator who charge FR for the use of wheelchairs by its passengers. FR must make a fortune out of it.

Let's face it, FR's original intention probably was to get rid of passengers in wheelchairs altogether, operations are easier without them = more profits. When the High Court threw the book at them, they "complied", but not without adding a surcharge for all passengers on all flights.

And, them being FR, they do of course get away with labelling such self-invented surcharge, which is in fact nothing but a fare rise to cover for BAA fees and make some more profit in the process, "levy", as they get away with advertising fares without such surcharge. Cheeky b*******!:mad:

(It's not that I'm against making profits :ok: or against making all passengers pay the cost of supplying wheelchairs. It's that FR's "low fare" claims veer towards the dishonest if other airline's "fares" now tend to be FR's "levies".)