Are OFT and CAA Toothless in the face of Ryanair Shenanigans?

2sides2everystory

It has become relatively quiet on these threads in the last couple of weeks on the subject of Ryanair p|ssing all over those who dare to consider them to start UK air travel journeys.

They have for the last two or three weeks adjusted their website and are breaching their own Ts and Cs by making it impossible for anyone to escape their card administration fee. This is aside from Ryanair being total hypocrites in criticising the UK government for their unavoidable Air Passenger Duty whilst introducing their own unavoidable £6 tax both inbound and outbound (if you buy the return leg at the same time).

In other words Ryanair are now taxing us more than the UK government.

They are behaving like hooligans, disrespecting UK and EU law at a time when they know that European governments are busy elsewhere. This is no different to hooded hooligans smashing windows and grabbing what they like knowing that there are no motivated forces out there willing to enter the fray and stop them.

When will OFT and CAA show they have bite? I would go as far as to say that with their hopeless hit rate, those in the cosy public sector jobs at the OFT should self-evidently be made redundant, and the same with the section of CAA which is also supposed to protect the public from this kind of outrageous behaviour (there is I understand some kind of overlap between OFT and CAA for this type of regulation).

It seems to me that neither OFT and CAA are fit for purpose in this regard.

Has anyone else noticed that Ryanair had in the last couple of weeks completely clamped down on use of any Mastercard Prepaid for journeys commencing at UK airports? Unlike the situation many of us watched developing in early November, it is clear that Ryanair just made a unilateral decision to "stuff it - make 'em all pay". It makes no difference which is your card billing country now.

Oh ... and before tiny brains get tempted to respond to this thread by promoting the preferred Ryanair arrangement which is to bung Ryanair £150 when you only wish to spend a fifth of it right now, and to blunder into all manner of spurious transaction charges too which worsen on 1st April, then please desist and go post your Irish-corporate-apologist drivel somewhere else.

OFT and CAA regulatory get your fingers out and your cosy a$$es in motion, please.

richardw

Yes, they both need bite. It's bonkers that they don't, and even more bonkers that current and past governments haven't given them any teeth.

Takecareofthepennies

Whew ... Feel better now OP?

I certainly don't love Ryanair, but it's an easy call to make every time I need to book a flight: Work out the bottom line for the cheapest option (usually, unfortunately, FR), compare this to the cost of flying with a decent carrier, then make your own call.

FR's business practices are loathsome, but more often than not their prices are still good even including the payment fees. And they'd still be the same if the £ 6 each way were included in the headline rate.

I frequently fly on FR for less than the APD and airport charges due, never check in baggage or buy anything onboard, so am actually costing them money. Only fair in my eys given their attitude towards customers.

alanrowell

Don't know what the CAA has to do with Ryanair's pricing policies - for one thing Ryanair are registered in Ireland and hence aviation matters are dealt with by the ICA

alanrowell

2sides2everystory wrote: »

Has anyone else noticed that Ryanair had in the last couple of weeks completely clamped down on use of any Mastercard Prepaid for journeys commencing at UK airports?

Given there have been several long threads on the subject since the change was announced a few months ago I would think most people here noticed long before you started ranting

richardw

There was a loophole that has recently been closed, alanr.

lgw29

the CAA have no control over ryanair as they are an irish airline, the only thing the caa can do is board the aircraft to check that they are safe

2sides2everystory

alanrowell wrote: »

Don't know what the CAA has to do with Ryanair's pricing policies - for one thing Ryanair are registered in Ireland and hence aviation matters are dealt with by the ICA

Shows how little you know about it Mr Rowell. Anyway - who is ICA? I think you mean IAA or where you alluding to ICAO ?

You have clearly not noticed how the change has developed since 1st November after which it was still possible to book oubound UK flights fee free using a Mastercard Prepaid with a non-UK card billing address for a period of maybe a week, maybe longer. After that, Ryanair threw their toys out of the pram completely and locked out everyone with a Prepaid Mastercard booking journeys starting in the UK irrespective of card billing address.

Basically their jolly Ryanair Cash Passport wheeze has fallen flat on it's face, they've denied screenscrapers access to their site cutting off their nose to spite their sorry face, and for anyone using Mastercard Prepaid their website is full of payment errors now so some people don't even know if they have a valid booking or not. Meantime I am sure their forward booking forecasts are looking a lot slimmer than they expected. On the other hand Easyjet who are not too proud to accept bookings from agents are enjoying a mini-boom on the back of package booking via the like of lastminute.com and expedia.co.uk where flight prices are not so sensitive when part of a City Break arrangement.

This Ryanair hooliganism against UK has got uglier than most of O'Leary's calendar girls (not you Lisa!) and yet for some inexplicable reason some people still wish to land on my outlandish thread far from where they intended to comment today and to pretty it up with cheap stuff. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.

I asked you Irish-corporate-apologists to desist from posting here but you still couldn't resist posting evidence of how out of touch you are, could you?

Now could we please get back to the serious business of making a song and dance please about why OFT and CAA have gone so quiet?

bagand96

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) are an organisation that was set up, and through its existance has continued to ensure the safe standards of aviation in the UK. This includes, but is not limited to, licensing, regulation, audits, of aircrew, air traffic controllers, engineers, airlines, maintenance companies, airports, ATC providers, instructors, flight training organisations, medicals etc. It goes on to include policy making and changing, data collection at both on national and international levels. And all this ranges from a Cessna that operates from a farm, to BA 747s at Heathrow.

Its pretty good at what it does in those tasks, standards in this country are very high and internationally respected, as is the CAA. Yes its a public body so its not perfect, and never will be.

The trouble is, it is not the organisation for the job you describe. It was never designed for it, and never really wanted it. Its a responsibility thats been forced upon it by regulations made at a European level, and the UK governments shuffling the responsibility onto the CAA. Bluntly the CAA is there to ensure Ryanair's planes don't end up as smoking holes in the ground due sloppy standards. Its not there to pick a fight with an Irishman over how his airline charges its passengers. They clearly feel their resources are best directed elsewhere.

The CAA doesn't have the teeth for the fight? Absolutely it doesn't. The CAA isn't fit for purpose in monitoring Ryanair and the way it charges its passengers? Absolutely. But should it be the vehicle to take the fight anwyay?

2sides2everystory

bagand96 wrote: »

The CAA doesn't have the teeth for the fight? Absolutely it doesn't. The CAA isn't fit for purpose in monitoring Ryanair and the way it charges its passengers? Absolutely. But should it be the vehicle to take the fight anwyay?

Who better? You cannot divorce pricing and other commercial regulation of commercial aviation from safety regulation. It is almost always commercial considerations that have to be reined in to achieve acceptable safety standards whether it be an enforced counter to any tendency to stretch the envelope or simply a need to restrict traffic flows and 'rights' granted to air operators in order to fairly fit them to airspace or airport capacities. Price regulation and consumer guarantees against air operators going bankrupt etc. is inevitably part of this and the CAA does have the expertise.

What's more, CAA is surely in a position to wave a big stick when it is given powers to do so and they have been given powers but they just seem a bit unsure of themselves when faced by hooligans who don't give a damn.

So where are they on this? Hiding from that horrible man? Too busy consulting on the APD complaint from Willie Walsh Branson and O'Leary as the three unlikely muskateers?

Methinks OFT and CAA need to be seen multi-tasking a bit more and showing who is boss.