Have RYANAIR cancelled your winter booking but not told you yet?

budgetflyer

Whats happening to me ? I agree Peter.

Its very dodgy the way routes disapear off the radar, especially if they are not informing customers immediately the route is binned.
Of course every airline needs to ammend its schedule to keep up with demand and remain profitable, just let us know b4 we get to the airport Michael !!
This is new BTW, last year I got plenty notice when they scrapped Eindhoven (b4 1 flight had taken off even) and "moved" me to Dusseldorf (Weeze)

Hidden amongs all the good "route news" , normally pinned at the bottom of an exciting improvement or addition, you can often find what routes are scrapped or ammended
ie http://www.ryanair.com/site/EN/news.php?yr=07&month=jul&story=rte-en-190707

BUT then you spoil it with a conspiracy that "they" are fiddling the duty, ie claiming a full tank when they have only half filled up

To give you a related example, I remember when it was a jolly wheeze for private pilots to fly their small aeroplanes to Jersey because fuel in Jersey was cheap (about 1/3 price of taxed fuel in the UK). Four people could have a day round trip to Jersey for a net total outlay of £20 I heard! How so if they spent £60 buying a tank full when they got there and twice that in hiring the plane??

The wheeze was in completing a UK Customs and Excise Fuel Duty drawback form to claim back all the duty on the full tank of fuel "exported" from UK to Jersey. Since UK Customs and Excise didn't have the manpower to check what's exported and what's not, then there was plenty of scope for low cost aviation courtesy of the common or garden UK taxpayer. If you haven't spotted it yet, I can tell you that it doesn't usually take a full tank of fuel to hop across to Jersey unless you take the pretty route!

Now I wonder exactly how it works for a company like Ryanair? Certainly "Tanking" cheap fuel is a serious part of an airline captain's job.

Would they risk a £50 million 737 being impounded for a half tank of fuel ?

trisontana

I had a similar experience with Wizzair. Last November I booked with them for flights for April of this year. Suddenly in mid January I had an email from them in the form of an invoice showing me they were refunding my fare but with no other explanation. It was only when I rang their call centre in Poland did they tell me that that particular route (Luton-Ljubljana) had been cancelled. There was no other email actually saying the flight was cancelled.

So a scramble round to book alternate flights with EasyJet, cancelling and rebooking my airport parking (because we were now flying from Stansted) and informing the taxi service in Ljubljana that we were arriving on a different flight.

trisontana

On the subject of Ryanair, they have been censured today by the ASA by claiming they quicker and cheaper from London to Brussels than Eurostar. The ruling is here :-

http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/adjudications/Public/TF_ADJ_43050.htm

Of course Ryanair have (as usual) dismissed the ruling, calling the ASA "Absolutely Stupid Asses". Why don't the company admit they were wrong in this case, instead of throwing their toys out of the pram as they usualy do?

peterbaker

budgetflyer wrote: »

... a £50 million 737 ... ?

I don't think so. I heard that China Airlines one that went up in flames was insured for about USD40M and I also remember an MO'L tv interviewer asking how much each Ryanair paid Boeing for theirs and good old Michael quipped
"Jes.., I don't even tell moy priest tings like that!"

My point is that with such huge transaction flows in any business where percentage taxes and refunds are posted by declaration, the rules and timings no doubt offer huge scope for creative accounting and "write-offs" and "unclaimed" and "orphan" amounts. It is the big business equivalent of finding tenners blowing in the street.

If they were concerned, and bearing in mind that a certain amount of diplomacy must surely apply when dealing with corporates who have ecomomies as big as some countries, the first stage by the authorities would be to ask, not to send the clampers out.

The fact is, as we have seen with some reactions to the subject to this thread, there are various degrees of concern and indifference to unpalatable business tactics suffered by customers, and no doubt HMCE suffers/tolerates in much the same ways.

peterbaker

Thought I'd report back and say we called Ryanair and swapped all four flights for nothing (how could they do otherwise since we'd caught them red-handed?). "Oh I can't understand why we haven't emailed you" they said. Yeah Right! One of the new sectors is currently advertised for £119 I think (plus plus)!!! That'll teach them to mess with us MoneySavers!

The moral of the story is keep checking your Ryanair winter flights to see if they still exist so you can pounce and get he best alternative flights before they sell them at inflated prices to the Bourgeoisie

budgetflyer

No more than you are entitled to Peter, I suspect.
From the AUC website re cancellations where you are given more than 14 days notice

http://www.caa.co.uk/default.aspx?catid=306&pagetype=90&pageid=4410

Under EU law you are entitled to
A refund of the full price you paid for your ticket within seven days for the part or parts of your journey not made (and for the part or parts already made if the flight is no longer serving any purpose in relation to your original travel plan) and a return flight to the departure airport as soon as possible.


or


Re-routing to your final destination as soon as possible or, if you agree, at a later date. (If the airline flies you to another airport in your destination city then they must pay for the transfer to the airport you were booked for or to another close-by point of your choice)

peterbaker

How do you mean budgetflyer? I didn't come back to the thread to brag, just to illustrate that had we not noticed and pre-empted their late notice, then we'd have just had no choice but to choose between a bad bunch of alternatives. All the best flights would probably have sold because I am guessing they're providing a single plane a day this winter for one and a half plane's worth of demand some days. That is bound to cause disappoinments for those who haven't booked yet, let alone those labouring under the illusion that they are safely booked who will get a rude awakening when it might be too late to do much about it.

PS Whoever designed that wording you quoted should have their keyboard taken away while they are sent on a course on how to write mutually exclusive paragraphs when describing alternatives.

The ambiguity in it is a veritable lawyers' paradise :mad:

Is there a "less than 14 days notice" clause which is any better?

budgetflyer

I didnt think or suggest you were bragging Peter.
Merely pointing out for some who maybe not aware that they were entitled to rerouting rather than just a refund.

Now for less than 14 days

It really depends when the 14 days kick in. When the flights actually cancelled? or when they notify you?

Id suggest the latter, but Ryanair may argue the primera.

The reason it is important is you may be due (that horrible word !) - COMPENSATION.

http://www.caa.co.uk/default.aspx?catid=306&pagetype=90&pageid=4408

If your flight is cancelled you are entitled (under Regulation (EC) 261/2004) to the following;

1. Refund or re-routing

1. If you decide not to travel you are entitled to a refund, within seven days, of the parts of the tickets not used. If it is a connecting flight and you have already made part of the journey and do not want to continue with it, reimbursement of the total price of the ticket (including parts of the journey not made if the flight is no longer serving any purpose in relation to your original travel plan) within seven days and a free flight back to point of departure.
You are not entitled (under Regulation 261/2004) to reimbursement of any other components of your trip such as hotel and transfer costs
or
Re-routing to your final destination as soon as possible or, if you agree, at a later date. (If the airline flies you to another airport in your destination city then they must pay for the transfer to the airport you were booked for or to another close-by point of your choice)
2. Compensation

(The airline is not obliged to pay compensation if it can prove that the cancellation was caused by "extraordinary circumstances which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken". Such extraordinary circumstances might occur "in cases of political instability, meteorological conditions incompatible with the operation of the flight concerned, security risks, unexpected flight safety shortcomings and strikes that affect the operation of an operating air carrier".)

Length of journey Delay to destination Compensation

Up to 1500km Up to 2 hours €125
Up to 1500km More than 2 hours €250
1500km to 3500km Up to 3 hours €200
1500km to 3500km more than 3 hours €400
More than 3500km Up to 4 hours €300
More than 3500km More than 4 hours €600

3. Assistance at the airport

• Meals and refreshments in reasonable relation to waiting time
• Two free telephone calls, emails, telexes or faxes
• Overnight hotel accommodation and transfers

peterbaker

Oh OK budgetflyer, I take back the comment about bragging , I misunderstood you.

What exactly does re-routing mean? Does Ryanair recognise such terms?

And if Ryanair was up to the trick of leaving it until the last week or so to notify us had we not pre-empted it, would we have been able to claim the cost of using another airline / transfer to our original destination? That would have been possible of course if someone else would saddle the cost! But would they?

Take our case for a moment, on one of the pairs of tickets we have a hotel booked and we have yet to book an additional night for a 100 Euros or so, plus we'll be taking an extra two days holiday now from work. That makes it a longer holiday, but also a considerably more expensive holiday than planned. Many people might not even have been able to accommodate such a change.

Any suggestions on how our case might have been pressed most effectively in each of the (over and under 14 days) cases?

budgetflyer

Say for eg you had booked to fly to Reus.
They cancel flight. My understanding (I am not a lawyer btw) is :-
They could fly you to Girona or Perpignan and bus or taxi you to your final point (Reus Airport) or close by ie Salou or Barcelona.

If cancelation less than 14 days from departure ,then they would also have to chuck you between 250(>2hrs) to 400 euro(>3hrs) as Reus is more than 1500KM but less than 3500km away.

I would imagine Ryanair will normally cancel more than 14 days. Its just the notification they apparently are having problems with.

There should be something more solid in place than just an email notification for what must be less than 0.1% of bookings. To protect both parties, what about a "real paper" signed for letter?