Flight delay and cancellation compensation, Ryanair ONLY

darloscot

O'Leary says on BBC "We will not pay for flights on other airlines, no. It is not part of the EU261 entitlement,"

When they cancelled my flight I was stranded in Lisbon and had to use another airline to eventually get home. Flight was cancelled after departure time as there was no pilot (according to gate staff). Can I expect Ryanair to cover my reasonable costs getting home, or is it capped at the €400 compensation? Have put a claim in for all my costs I incurred as a result.

JPears

O'Leary clearly doen's know the regualtion or his legal bods are trying it on.
If RA don't offer you a replacement flight, within a reasonable time, you can seek a refund and claim the cost of the alternative flight, as well as your compensation.
What is reasonable? No one knows, less than 24 hours is probably reasonable. Several day, unreasonable. The airline must go to the level of "intolerable sacrifice in minimising your delay" before they can claim they have been reasonable.
Unfortunately this has rarely, if ever, been tested in court and no precedent has been set that I am aware of.

Depends on the judge you get as most likely it will require legal action.

martynh99

JPears wrote: »

O'Leary clearly doen's know the regualtion or his legal bods are trying it on.
If RA don't offer you a replacement flight, within a reasonable time, you can seek a refund and claim the cost of the alternative flight, as well as your compensation.
What is reasonable? No one knows, less than 24 hours is probably reasonable. Several day, unreasonable. The airline must go to the level of "intolerable sacrifice in minimising your delay" before they can claim they have been reasonable.

Not had an email yet from RA but the return flight for my 8 day holiday (28th Sep) is shown as cancelled on website and when I click into my booking. Alternative flights are 26th Sep or 30th Sep.
As I interpret EU261 I can take a refund from RA and claim the full compensation , it's <1500km. If I take the refund now via their website, i'm not relinquishing my right to claim am I ?

<edit> 1 hour after posting (and 3 hours after checking booking online), text & email received confirming cancelled.
Not yet picked refund / rebook option other than to look at what they were offering.
Already rebooked with Monarch for same day, 2 hours earlier than RA flight.

Tyzap

JPears wrote: »

O'Leary clearly doen's know the regualtion or his legal bods are trying it on.
If RA don't offer you a replacement flight, within a reasonable time, you can seek a refund and claim the cost of the alternative flight, as well as your compensation.
What is reasonable? No one knows, less than 24 hours is probably reasonable. Several day, unreasonable. The airline must go to the level of "intolerable sacrifice in minimising your delay" before they can claim they have been reasonable.
Unfortunately this has rarely, if ever, been tested in court and no precedent has been set that I am aware of.

Depends on the judge you get as most likely it will require legal action.

... and the CAA says you can use other airlines.

So if you are asked to wait for three, four or more days to catch your RA re-arranged flight you could make alternative arrangements on a rival airline and then claim it back from RA.

They will probably fight it, but it would be in direct contradiction of the CAA's interpretation of the regs.

However, you can only claim compensation if you are informed of the cancellation within two weeks of your flight date. Any longer and you are only due a re-arranged flight or a refund.

I doubt that publishing a list of flights to be cancelled , as RA have now done, would suffice as sufficient notice. The regs say you must be informed and that the onus is on the airline to prove you have been correctly informed.

It looks like this thread could be about to get very busy.

JPears

bumped to tidy board

darloscot

darloscot wrote: »

O'Leary says on BBC "We will not pay for flights on other airlines, no. It is not part of the EU261 entitlement,"

When they cancelled my flight I was stranded in Lisbon and had to use another airline to eventually get home. Flight was cancelled after departure time as there was no pilot (according to gate staff). Can I expect Ryanair to cover my reasonable costs getting home, or is it capped at the €400 compensation? Have put a claim in for all my costs I incurred as a result.

Heard from customer services today. They have offered me the €400 per person as a 'full and final settlement'. No mention of the costs I incurred getting home, and no mention of refunding the cancelled flight costs. If I accepted this I would be about €700 down compared to where I would have been if they had flown me home. They are saying it was an unexpected technical fault that cancelled the flight, but on the day we were told there was no captain. Was cancelled a week last Sunday, so I suspect the first day or two of the current problems.

Any advice on what next? I assume talking to Ryanair customer service will be talking to a brick wall. Should I use resolver to escalate, or will that just get the same response?

DrA_Harrogate

I watched the O'Leary car crash statement. I thought his bald statement that Ryanair would not pay for flights on alternate airlines factually wrong (but checked here, obviously!)

2 friends have Ryanair bookings in the not too distant future and are now armed with the relevant facts if they get bumped. I said they would probably have to fight for the payment tho'!

Is the Teflon wearing off?

JPears

darloscot wrote: »

Heard from customer services today. They have offered me the €400 per person as a 'full and final settlement'. No mention of the costs I incurred getting home, and no mention of refunding the cancelled flight costs. If I accepted this I would be about €700 down compared to where I would have been if they had flown me home. They are saying it was an unexpected technical fault that cancelled the flight, but on the day we were told there was no captain. Was cancelled a week last Sunday, so I suspect the first day or two of the current problems.

Any advice on what next? I assume talking to Ryanair customer service will be talking to a brick wall. Should I use resolver to escalate, or will that just get the same response?

Neither of those are an EC.
You will have a fight on your hands.
You could try resolver, you could try the ADR RA has signed up to but ultimately I suspect you will need to go legal so look up Dr Watson's excellent notes on the ESCP process.
I'm sure the good Dr will be along shortly given RA's fiasco..

RAflyer

So I just got a cancellation email from RA. No idea yet if and how rebooking will work out.

The thing is, I am aware that if a flight is canceled at least 14 days in advance, no compensation of any kind is given.

I got my email 13 days and 21 hours before take-off time. Would this be late enough to fight for compensation, if I decided to go this route? Or would it be rounded up to 14 days?

JPears

As usual with RA, you will have a fight, but 13 days 21 hours is just that, not 14 days. Compensation due IMHO.
Get your claim in now.