Flight delay and cancellation compensation, Ryanair ONLY

housebuyer7

Just checked my emails and the email arrived at 17:52 according to UK time, but it was 18:52 due to being 1 hour ahead when I received it. And we were due to depart at 19:40.

housebuyer7

I found it - on their website it says you can change your flight to a later one up to one hour before departure time of the original flight.

eskbanker

It still seems to me that what you've already conveyed to Aviation ADR ought to rebut Ryanair's argument, so I'm not sure that you necessarily need to find other arguments, although the more supporting evidence you have the better.  The specific figure of 500 people queueing may be questionable if there were two flights cancelled, so that may have detracted from credibility a bit, but the rest all sounds genuine.

The above claim costs all seem legitimate to me too....

housebuyer7

Oh I just assumed there were 250 on each flight but yes I don’t know for sure. The point is it was absolutely packed with people spilled onto the street bit outside the airport

CKhalvashi

housebuyer7 said:

Oh I just assumed there were 250 on each flight but yes I don’t know for sure. The point is it was absolutely packed with people spilled onto the street bit outside the airport

As Ryanair aircraft either have 189 or 197 seats this would not be possible.

From experience Ryanair do not routinely overbook and no airline would be stupid enough to do it on this scale.

housebuyer7

Oh I see! I did not realise, it was just a dumb guess

eskbanker

housebuyer7 said:

Oh I see! I did not realise, it was just a dumb guess

Fair enough - I wasn't trying to catch you out, but simply highlighting that stating something demonstrably factually incorrect within a formal claim process could hinder rather than help, given that ultimately the arbiter will need to be making decisions based on credibility of competing claims if the evidence isn't enough, so merely stating that the airport was overwhelmed with hundreds of passengers needing assistance would have sufficed.

Anyway, that was a relatively minor point, and to me the overwhelming conclusion is that you took all reasonable steps in the circumstances, if your response was effectively:

18:52-55 - received email advising cancellation
immediately - first attempted to rebook our flight via the Ryanair app, but this option wasn’t available to us and had been greyed out as you had cancelled our flight 45 minutes before take-off
19:00 - attempted to use the Ryanair website live chat (at approximately 19:00 CEST), which we could not get to connect with a customer services operator
19:04 - attempted to contact Ryanair via telephone call but despite calling the UK number we found (+44 1279358395 - time stamped in my phone records at 19:04:52 CEST), the operator messages were recorded in French, so we were unable to proceed
??? - attempted to book two alternative flights using Ryanair, first from XXX to Stansted on Sunday 28th August (flight number XXX) and second from XXX to East Midlands on Sunday 28th August (flight number XXX). However, both these flights sold out within minutes, and we were too late.
??? - The only flight we could find was EasyJet departing from XXX to London Gatwick on Sunday 28th August (flight number XXX), which was certainly not convenient. However, we urgently needed to get home due to work commitments

Have Ryanair indicated a better alternative option that they believe would have been available to you if you'd succeeded in contacting them?  It seems unlikely that there would have been anything particularly suitable if there weren't any flights at all leaving Bergerac that same day!

The idea that they fulfilled their obligations simply by telling you that you could choose between rerouting or refund, and that you effectively waived your rights by not succeeding in contacting them, is ridiculous IMHO....

housebuyer7

Thanks for your help! I agree with everything you have said and hope it won't hurt my case.

No they haven't come forward with an alternative flight - it would have been days later during the mid week when we needed to be back at work and would have required being put in a hotel and provided with food for these days so I think on balance what we did was the most cost-effective for Ryanair. Unfortunately again, I didn't take screenshots showing that flights to Stansted and East Midlands sold out before I could book. I was really worried about booking Easyjet and was willing to go as far noth as East Midlands and also looked at Birmingham if there was a flight available, I did not choose this inconvenient flight option lightly. In their communication to me it said the onus is on me to prove there was nothing else available.

eskbanker

housebuyer7 said:

Unfortunately again, I didn't take screenshots showing that flights to Stansted and East Midlands sold out before I could book.

There's no obligation for customers in such situations to keep an audit trail of screenshots evidencing what they did, especially when time is of the essence, so if you're confident that there wasn't anything more suitable with Ryanair, based on reasonable efforts made at the time then I can't see that they have a leg to stand on.

housebuyer7 said:

In their communication to me it said the onus is on me to prove there was nothing else available.

I don't believe that you're required to demonstrate that the flights you booked were necessarily the best or cheapest, as nobody can reasonably be expected to have conducted a detailed trawl of every single permutation, especially when the only two flights from where you were back to your corner of the UK had both been cancelled, but if you explain the steps that you went through to try to locate a realistic option then I can't see Ryanair convincing Aviation ADR otherwise.

Veggiesupreme

I was just wondering thoughts on this. Our flight was delayed by over three hours in October from Ireland to UK. We were travelling with an elderly relative who we were bringing back for a short stay so not ideal. 

The flight landed just within the three hour window but due to us waiting for ground staff we were delayed by 15minutes over, by the time they opened first door (which was at front of plane, we were at back). The court ruling states that operators are supposed to base arrival time from first door opening as it is only at this point the journey has finished. 

We applied for compensation through Ryanair based on the court ruling and they just kept quoting that it landed within three hours, so I then took it to the ADR who after waiting months have just come back and said as final decision: 

5.3 From the evidence submitted by the Airline, I am satisfied that this demonstrates that the delay to the Flight was less than three hours on arrival. In accordance with Article 7 of the Regulation, as the delay on arrival did not exceed three hours, I am equally satisfied that compensation is not payable in this case.

5.4 On the basis that I have determined that the disruption to the Flight did not exceed three hours on arrival, I do not need to consider whether the Airline took all reasonable measures to limit or avoid the delay.

 2/ 3

  In conclusion:

I determine that no remedy is due in this case and the claim is therefore dismissed.

In my final response to ADR in relation to Ryanair’s replay that said I had to prove it was over three hours late in which I queried how I was supposed to do this (as I had logged the time of first door opening and what more could I have done?) and how I felt that surely Ryanair should log this information rather than time of arrival on stand (which they had logged) so they prove official arrival time as per court ruling. As you can see from their response they have completely ignored this point. 

I’m just wondering what people might advise as next steps, it says I can take court action but I’ve already found the whole process frustrating due to the antiquated systems ADR have which have resulted in lots of back and forth between them due to their systems overwriting information. I am tempted to just leave it but another part of me is really annoyed that A) ADR have completely ignored what I believe to be valid points and B ) The airline not recording information pertinent to court ruling and expecting customer to prove something that they know they can’t. 

Any advice welcome. Thanks