Avoiding denial of boarding

mallard

Hello. During the COVID lockdowns we had hols cancelled. One was thorough a travel company and flights with ryanair. We had the money back but now want to book some hols (not been able to go abroad until now whilst waiting for surgery etc). Found a few but often these include ryanair flights. Have read that the airline has denied boarding to people if they had refunds through an agent rather than ryanair. Don't want to end up in this situation so any suggestions as to how to check if ryanair will block us? I've tried putting the flight details in their booking site but no joy. Ty

bagand96

From memory the issue was with people who'd  requested chargebacks via their credit cards in cases where, in Ryanair's opinion, no refund was due (because the flight still operated). Things at that time were frantic and many people just requested chargebacks, banks were overwhelmed so just processed them without much checking and airlines were overwhelmed so appealing them was difficult. 

In those cases Ryanair made it clear in the customer's account that there was an outstanding invoice to settle. Where further flights were booked Ryanair threatened denial of boarding until the outstanding balance was settled.

I don't recall this affecting people booked via agents. There was a separate issue there where pax were requesting refunds from Ryanair even though they'd booked with an agent - some agents were advising people to do this. Ryanair bought in a verification process for cases like this to ensure the claims and pax were genuine.

You may be over thinking it - haven't heard of any horror stories recently. 

CKhalvashi

This was for Chargebacks, meaning the flight left (so Ryanair had met their contractual commitment to keep a seat available for anyone who booked) and there was then no right to a refund under Ryanair's freely available terms and conditions.

It is the responsibility of the passenger in non-package cases to ensure they meet entry requirements for any given country, which normally refers to visas but can include health requirements also.

These debts are rightfully owed to Ryanair and they have chosen to use this method to ensure the debts are paid. As most people will probably use Ryanair again in the future, this is likely the most cost effective way to do so. Ryanair's terms and conditions state clearly that any debts must be repaid before travel will be allowed.

Agents have different requirements under the Package Travel Directive and therefore this is unlikely to apply with any reputable agent.

mallard

Thanks for the info. We didn't do a chargeback so should be okay.