Ryanair insists we failed to board a phantom flight | Consumer affairs

I was on a Ryanair flight from Bristol to Dublin which took off during Storm Amy in October last year. He was unable to land in Dublin after two abortive attempts and was diverted to Manchester, where we sat on the plane for six hours, without free refreshments, before being without care ejected to almost midnight.

We were told Ryanair staff would arrange taxis and hotels, but no crew disembarked with us, and the terminal was deserted.

I was forced, along with other passengers, to take a taxi to a hotel for the night. There was no news from Ryanair and no flights were shown as available the next day, so I took two buses back to Bristol.

The aborted trip cost me £900 but Ryanair did not offer a ticket refund and refused my claim for £240 for hotel and transport because it seems to have recorded the flight as having landed in Dublin.

R.C., Bishop’s Tawton, Devon

Your communications with Ryanair make for surreal reading. Customer service agents initially insisted that you submit your claim through the company’s online portal, which did not list your flight as canceled or delayed.

After two weeks, you were suddenly told that you had been reassigned to a flight from Dublin that was supposed to take off while you were still stuck on the hijacked plane. Since you failed to board that phantom flight, he claimed you weren’t entitled to the fees.

In vain, you requested communication informing you of this replacement flight, or of the number of passengers who traveled on it. Ryanair has simply doubled down and washed its hands of you.

It wasn’t until I questioned the airline that they decided you had been “misinformed.” She has now refunded the cost of the flight and offered to cover your hotel and transportation costs.

As for the refreshments that airlines are required to provide free if the delay exceeds two hours, she told me, disingenuously, that the bar was open. He later admitted it was a cash bar. Passengers could claim the refund through its online portal, it says, and we can all guess how that would happen.

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