What can I claim?

Jonathan13

Hi
Could anyone please advise what I might be able to claim in the following situation?
We booked flights on Ryanair from Newcastle to Wroclaw on Thursday 12th March 2020, returning on Sunday 15th March.
On Friday 13th March, as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, we received communication that the Polish government were closing airports and cancelling flights from 00:01 on Sunday 15th March, which was confirmed by a notification on the Wroclaw airport website. We also spoke to the British Embassy whose advice was basically to ‘get out of the country before midnight’ otherwise we would be stuck in Poland for at least 10 days.
We tried contacting Ryanair for clarification but could not speak to anyone. 

As our flight was due to leave after the deadline, we decided to try to exit the country on 14th March and managed to get on a flight (paying for tickets) to London Stansted, following which, we hired a car to drive back to Newcastle - all of this before Ryanair’s customer services re-opened at 8am!
Bearing in mind that we were aware of the Polish government’s decision at 8pm on Friday 13th, the first we heard/saw from Ryanair was a Twitter post at 3pm on Saturday 14th advising that all flights to/from Poland had been cancelled and I didn’t receive an email with instructions/advice until 5:38pm, giving the option of a refund or alternative flight. 
Are we able to claim anything for preempting being stranded in Poland and incurring significantly more costs than we would otherwise have if our flight had departed as schedule and also if we had waited for Ryanair’s notification, given we would most likely not have been able to get on a flight before the deadline?
Many thanks for your help/advice

garlieston

Apart from your unused Ryanair return fare probably zilch, at the time you booked your alternative flight ryanair had not cancelled yours and you had given them no chance to rearrange anything so i reckon they are off the hook.

Justice13075

What time on Friday did you get the communication and who sent it to you?

Jonathan13

Just for clarity, the timescales below are GMT, Poland is GMT+1.

We were sent a screenshot of a Financial Times article on our football team WhatsApp group chat by one of the lads in the UK at 20:12 on Friday 13th.

I checked the Wroclaw airport website at about 21:15, which confirmed the airport closure.

Another in our group spoke to the British Embassy about 22:30, whose advice was to get out of the country before 23:01 on 14th (ie. 00:01 on 15th in Poland), which gave us just over 24hrs.

The first communication from Ryanair was 15:00 on Saturday 14th when they posted on Twitter that flights to/from Poland had been cancelled from 15th-31st March.

I received the cancellation email at 17:38 on Saturday 14th, ie. the point at which we could get a refund or rearrange flights. This would have given us less than 5.5hrs to exit the country before midnight in Poland.
There was 1 Ryanair flight left out of Wroclaw at that point, flying to Cork. We would have had 1hr to react to the email and get to the airport and on that flight before it departed (which was never going to happen, either logistically or for the number of people that would already have been there trying to get on that flight), otherwise we would have been stranded!

I appreciate it’s not within their control but we knew about the situation 21hrs before their email allowing us to attempt to rearrange flights. There was no way we or Ryanair would have been able to rearrange anything by the time they reacted.

JPears

If you have half decent travel insurance, this should cover it.

However I would try a claim from Ryanair in the first instance. As you say you weren't able to contact Ryanair and they didn't comminucate with for most of the day.  You knew in advance that your flight would most likely be cancelled. Ryanair have a duty of care, irrespective of the circumstances in reg 261/2004.

Good luck on getting anything out of Ryanair, even though in my opinion, your are legally entitled to re-routing expenses.