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It is hard to fault Ryanair when everything is running smoothly but when things go wrong they can go very wrong indeed, as a reader we’ll call Jane found out towards the end of the summer. Although quite who to blame in this instance remains very much up in the air.
“My husband was on a cycling holiday in France,” begins Jane’s mail brightly enough before taking a dark turn.
Her husband had an accident while away and was hospitalised with seven broken bones, including his collar bone, his scapula and five of his ribs.
“I flew over to bring him home,” she says.
Her travel insurance provider organised the trip home – the closest airport with a direct flight was Biarritz “so we agreed to fly Ryanair Biarritz – Dublin. We were assured of end-to-end assistance and this was all agreed with the doctors in the hospital and the insurance company”, she says.
Jane’s husband “was not able to walk more than a few steps and was in extreme pain. He was supposed to have wheelchair assistance at all points,” she continues. ” The medical taxi brought us from the hospital to the airport, where medical assistance did not materialise and no one was at the desk.”
She says she was told by the insurer not to check in online as Ryanair “were to assign us suitable seats – with a third seat for comfort so no one would squeeze against my husband. Ryanair were supposed to do all this for free at the airport,” she says.
That is not what happened.
Instead the couple were “charged €200 for airport check-in, bag check-in (again purchased by the insurer) and extra for ‘luxury seats’. I explained everything to the agent and was obviously upset, but he did not care and would not let us check in without paying it. We then had to walk through security, which was excruciating for my husband. He needed to take meds with food and we barely had time to do this. Finally, someone assisted him getting on the plane at the point of boarding.”
The couple’s tale of painful woe does not end there.
On the plane they discovered they had “been assigned emergency exit seats for which we had been charged extra. The crew told us we could not sit there and we were told to find other seats. Again, very little assistance offered and we had to tell others they couldn’t sit beside us.”
She says she has “been in a battle since with Ryanair and the insurer has contacted them several times too. They are claiming all sorts of technicalities and told the insurer we were entitled to a refund and should have been given free check-in and seats as we needed medical assistance. They’re now backtracking on that and saying that the free check-in had to be applied for – although the medical assistance was applied for.”
She says that although they were not out “a huge amount of money, it was a really horrible experience and really distressing for both of us. The awful landing of the plane at very high speed did not help and my husband’s collar bone was further displaced. He has since had surgery on it and is doing better.”
We sent this story to Ryanair.
It was having none of it. This is its response.
A spokeswoman said Jane “was not shabbily treated by Ryanair, rather she was shabbily treated and clearly misled either by her travel agent or her insurance company”.
The airline’s statement continues at length in a similar vein
“1. The booking was made by a Dutch travel agent on September 11th. The travel agent in this case booked the two passengers with a regular fare, which included seat selection but the travel agent omitted to check them in online or to advise them to do so before they arrived at the airport. The assurances they received of “end-to-end assistance” was baseless. The insurers advice ‘not to check-in online as Ryanair were to assign us suitable seats’ was absurd and does not form any part of Ryanair’s well-known service.
“2. The travel agent had booked the wheelchair service at Biarritz, but this is provided – not by Ryanair – but by Biarritz Airport. We are unaware as to why the wheelchair service was not provided, or why the wheelchair assistance desk was unmanned at their arrival. Wheelchair assistance is not provided by airlines, it is provided by the airports, but is paid for by the airlines. We regret that it was not provided in this case, however it was provided on their return to Dublin, by Dublin Airport.
“3. When they got to the check-in desk, they were correctly advised they had not checked in for the flight, and they were properly charged the airport check-in fee. Their travel agent had also failed to book a checked bag for them, so they were correctly charged €35.99 to check in a bag, which was placed in the hold of the aircraft.
“This passenger’s claim that they were told by their insurer that Ryanair ‘was to assign us suitable seats’ is more baseless advice from their insurer. The travel agents had booked over-wing emergency aisle seats but as one passenger was injured and unable to open the over-wing door in an emergency, they were not permitted by safety regulations to sit in these over-wing exit seats. The passengers were requested to move seats and they did so swapping with other passengers who were physically fit to sit in the emergency over-wing exit row.
“5. Ryanair has not received any queries from the insurance company. The claim made by this passenger that ‘the insurer has contacted them several times too’ is false. We received one approach by the Dutch travel agent on September 30th, some three weeks after they travelled, where the travel agent wrongly claimed they only booked a ‘Plus’ fare package for these passengers, but they then accepted that they had in fact only booked the regular fare, not the ‘Plus’ fare package when this was shown to them.
“6. The travel agent then requested that the airport check-in fee be refunded, and it was pointed out that this check-in fee was properly levied as neither of these passengers nor the travel agent had checked in online before arriving at Biarritz Airport.”
The statement concluded with the following. “Much as we regret the misadvice and the false assurances that [Jane] and her husband appear to have received in this case, this was due to false assurances received from either their insurance company or the Dutch travel agent – not Ryanair. Therefore, her claims that Ryanair ‘mistreated’ her or ‘denied our responsibilities’ are false.”