A Ryanair palava.

mattymc13

I am certain many of you will have seen the below image before. It would appear it is a common Ryanair practice to scupper and frustrate any compensation claims from the get-go.

The story is thus. I was due to fly from Leeds Bradford to Malaga. I got to the airport two and a half hours prior to departure. No sooner had I stepped foot inside the airport, it flashed up on my phone the flight was now cancelled. I had a funeral to get to in the south of Spain the following morning. I contacted Ryanair to see what options they had for me in terms of transfers to other airports for other flights, but it was mid to late afternoon on a Sunday and there was just nothing viable. This is all irrelevant anyway because there was no plane, nor indeed any staff, so I am owed 400 euros for that, of which I am in no doubt. They rebooked everybody on a new flight at 3pm the following day, which took off at 4:50pm - there's a pattern of general incompetence emerging here. Missing the funeral was gutting, but it was nice to spend some time with the family of my friend and they were very understanding of the situation.

The return home was slightly more complicated. I arrived at Malaga airport in good time, sat in Starbucks, phone notifies me the plane is delayed by an hour, which is not ideal, but just about manageable. Half an hour later I am informed it will be delayed by three hours. Not good - there's a rail strike at home, I have booked myself on the last available coach that evening and it would be long gone by the time I arrive. I decide it would be cheaper to stay in Torremolinos for a further night and fly home the following day, which I did. The flight LANDED exactly three hours after it was supposed to, but I am reliably informed a compensation claim would be valid there, too, because it's about when the first cabin door opens and NOT when the wheels hit the tarmac.

This is all just preamble, though, as I was blissfully unaware of how completely horrifying the compensation process is. I was greeted with the below image upon attempting to make BOTH compensation claims. And this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, as when I enter my email address and flight booking number, it brings up both the flight in question AND my full name. I check both boxes and it then gives me the below error message.

I got onto live chat and asked them to explain what the hell is going on. They tell me not to worry and submit the claims through their general complaints form. I submitted the FIRST claim and was replied to the following day with a link to the EU-261 form. Having already explained to them it isn't working, this was rather irritating.

It was at this point I managed to catch out the live chat customer service representative in a brazen and filthy lie. I asked them to check on the nature of BOTH of my claims, having only submitted ONE, and she came back with, "I can see here both of them have been forwarded to the relevant department". So I asked, "Both the Leeds to Malaga AND the Malaga to Luton?" To which she replied, "Yes". I took great pleasure in calling out such BS, but ultimately it does nothing for me, as I KNOW deep down this is going to take ages, and I am the kind of chap who these folk love because I get !!!!!! off and quit so easily!

Does anybody have ANY advice on how I can cut through their crap and get this over with as soon as possible? Or even ANY advice why their EU-261 form isn't working? The cynic in me reckons it is deliberate sabotage, but I'm willing to listen to other theories!

mattymc13

Just to add some further observations. When I attempt to search for the initial cancelled flight from Leeds/Bradford to Malaga, there is no record of it anywhere. Is it standard practice for scheduled, cancelled, commercial flights to disappear without trace after the fact?

Even more suspiciously, when I attempt to retrieve ANY information from my own Ryanair account about this flight, I am greeted by the following error message...



This wasn't the case up until I requested compensation - I could full access everything about the trip. It feels like they are trying to erase the entire episode from history.

Even weirder was when everybody was at the airport waiting around wandering what to do, the only place that was saying the flight was cancelled was the Ryanair app. Every aircraft departure website the scheduled time of departure and never at any point said it was cancelled or delayed. Even the screens in the airport were instructing us to go to a specific gate number, long after the plane was supposed to have departed.

I don't know how they are allowed to operate like this, quite frankly. They are a budget airline for the consumer, yes, but they aren't a budget airline when it comes to aviation safety or simply reporting accurate information to the airport (because Leeds/Bradford staff didn't have a clue what was happening either). They first airport staff learned of the cancellation was when people showed them the notification on the Ryanair app.