Martin Lewis calls on Ryanair boss to refund passengers hit with name-change charges - MSE News

As someone who has done a bit of computer programming and enhancement of existing computer programs I can see how easily a glitch may have arisen with Ryanair's attempts to synchronise their website with their mobile App.

In fact there is at least one minor but similar (involving name) glitch pervading right at this moment which I have seen previously:

If you are a member of a party who is NOT the lead passenger, you can still add the flight to your own MyRyanair flights. You'll need just the booking reference and the lead passenger's email address to do it.

I am sure thousands do this daily now. How else do you control your own flight/seat after it is booked without bothering the lead passenger or relying upon them to book your additional bag or seat, and check in for you? And how else do you avoid having to print your boarding pass so you can independently scan the pass at security, and the gate, and show it on your mobile as you reach the top of the aircraft steps?

I have one such flight in a couple of days. Having added the flight to MyRyanair some time ago, I logged in to the App on my phone to check in.

The flight was shown in my list of upcoming flights and as soon as I selected it the first thing that came up was "Sit with Peter".

The App already knows I am Peter because I logged in as myself!

So this part of the App has missed that I am already verified as Peter. It thinks I am the lead passenger because in order to view my flight via MyRyanair I had once upon a time used the booking reference and lead passenger email (that's all) to duplicate the whole booking in MyRyanair.

If you follow me so far, I wouldn't mind betting that a computer programmer has in his code lost track of the link between the program user's unique identifier, the lead passenger name and my name. It actually looks a bit dyslexic and I am sure some dyslexics have minds very suited in other ways for creative coding but in this case Ryanair's code needs a fine tooth comb check

Edit: I haven't looked at it closely myself yet, but there appears on our same booking another example of loose linking of personal data that could lead to wrong passport detail being linked to the boarding pass of the lead passenger. She was travelling on Ryanair a few months ago with another member of the family and this morning when she went to check-in, she tells me she was asked which of two stored passports she wanted to use - the other one happened to be the other member of her family who travelled last year under the same surname but isn't even on this latest booking!

Clearly all Ryanair stored passport details had been uniquely linked previously to one individual only, so why was Ryanair offering alternatives? Is the problem that in some 'use cases' (as we call different task scenarios in systems terms) our email address is a unique identifier e.g. when we log in to MyRyanair with our own unique password, but in other cases e.g. when we are "soft-verified" as persons entitled to view flight itinerary data we are not uniquely identified by using the email address or by combining it with the booking reference. The only way we can be uniquely identified digitally is if we are asked for the account password. Ryanair know this but, perhaps reflecting a a not dissimilar soft-verification used for many years with the Amadeus system have decided it is more important to allow soft-verified access to itinerary including passenger personal data than it is to be sure about who is using the booking reference to view the data. With many major airlines not just lo-cost I think you can view all booking detail if you have just passenger surname and booking reference (no password)?