Advice needed- Screwed over by Ryanair!

cherabelle

Hi, hoping someone has some advice for me.

This morning at 7:25am I was meant to fly from Stansted to Dussledorf, we arrived at the airport well ahead of time and checked the check in board. The only flight listed for Dussledorf this morning showed as gate 5. (Correct time and everything).

Making our way to the gate we noticed it was showing air Berlin, shortly after we were informed it wasn't that gate and it happens everyday people going to the right gate.
With 35 mins still to go about 11 people all on separate bookings made themselves known that we had all gone to the only gate showing on the board. We were informed someone would collect us to take us to the right gate, they arrived an hour later after the flight had gone without us.

Staff at the wrong gate informed us it happens everyday and yesterday 52 people had the same problem and where left standed.
We where taken to the Ryanair desk who have done nothing to help us other than charge another £110 to send us to Eindhoven. No apology, no goodwill gesture and basically said its our fault. We are not sure what our rights are about this, I plan a very strongly worded letter to Ryanair but does anyone know where I stand? It is a known problem according to a lot of none Ryanair staff in the airport and happens everyday. Surely 11 separate bookings on the same flight can't all be that bad at reading a board.

I have got travel insurance but they want me to speak to the Airline first.

Any help much appreciated.

C X

cherabelle

Forgot to mention the best of it was, we had to print our boarding passes at home but the scanner wouldn't read the code. We were made to go the Ryanair desk who reprinted the vouchers for us- they didn't even think to tell us a gate then like other airlines may have if they knew there was problems!!

apt

I doubt you will be covered by travel insurance. Missed departure payments are only for the reasons specified in the policy - usually failure or delay of public transport or delays on the direct road route. Maybe you should have been looking for Weeze which is the airport Ryanair flies to.

jillie1974

did you check the flight number against the Dusseldorf gate 5?

it is your responsibilty to get to the right gate. how long were you at the gate?

k3lvc

How about changing the title to "Couldn't read the departures board and missed my flight" - it's no secret that if you fly with them you play by their rules which means checking/double checking/triple checking everything (inclusing your destination)

cherabelle

One of the other passengers has proof there was no sign up for a flight to Weeze, the only flight listed for 7:25 at all was to Dussledorf.... We even looked specifically for Weeze as we knew that's where we were going.

They told us at the gate it never gets put up as Weeze either..

jillie1974

if you couldnt see a listiing for it and the Dusseldorf flight that was listed wasnt a ryanair flight number, did you not ask at information desk?

ryanair often dont announce the gate number to about 45 mins before flight is due to depart

jacques_chirac

I would be questioning how the rest of the flight found the correct gate? I would also agree with others - the departures screen and the gate screen would show the flight number, which clearly was not a Ryanair number - once you noticed this, why did you not find your way to the correct gate (rather than waiting for someone to move you)?

[Deleted User]

The Departures Boards are the responsibility of Stansted Airport not Ryanair.
The responsibility for reading the boards correctly lies with the passengers.
I would very much doubt if Ryanair ground staff would regularly allows dozens of people to miss a specific flight every day deliberately without taking some action to rectify this problem.
I also don't believe the correct Ryanair departure gate was not on the Board and anyway 35 minutes should have been plenty of time to change gates.
I don't see why Ryanair need to apologise or compensate in this case.

richardw

When you've left the main terminal airside building and gone to the separate departure wings, then the departure boards only show details for that departure wing of the airport.
So it's important to check for the FR flight number on the departure board in the main building for the gate.

Pollycat

I don't know about anybody else but I don't think the OP has been screwed over by Ryanair.