As I enter this debate I will start by saying that I am a big fan of Ryanair. I have been flying with airline for 30 years and in recent times I would be on ten to twenty flights per year. I have never had any cause for complaint, no member of Ryanair staff has ever been rude to me, I have never seen a member of Ryanair staff being rude to anyone else. On two or three occasions I have witnessed Ryanair staff be very firm with passengers who were angry and rude as a result of being made to pay for baggage that clearly exceeded the well-publicised limits.
While I expect no more of Ryanair than I would expect of an inter-city bus operator, on a number of occasions I have had particularly positive experiences with the airline.
- On my way to Riga Airport I managed to lose two boarding passes and the attendant at the Ryanair desk in the airport printed off replacements for €2 or €3 each.
- My son and I separately booked seats on the same flights from Berlin to Dublin. We both have the same uncommon name and a Ryanair representative phoned me to make sure that it wasn’t a duplicate booking.
- I once made an error in booking a flight out of Luton to connect with my incoming flight to Gatwick. I realised I had made a mistake within 24 hours and was able to use “live chat” to cancel the Luton flight and book one out of Gatwick. The fares were the same and there was no charge for the service.
- A friend who had booked five return tickets to Portugal had to cancel when her father died a few days before departure. She wrote to Ryanair explaining the circumstances and received a courteous reply offering condolences, with an assurance of a full refund on submission of a copy of the death certificate.
I have in my possession the copy of a return Aer Lingus ticket for a trip from Dublin to Amsterdam in 1981. The cost was almost £300. I didn’t pay for it, my employer did. Allowing for inflation, the equivalent today would be in the region of £2,000 to £3,000. If Michael O’Leary hadn’t made regular flying possible for the masses, few of us today would be making multiple flights per year and there would be very many fewer jobs available for cabin crew and pilots.
Now on to the Barcelona incident. I would probably side with those who say that the police should have been called to remove the man. It is, however, a judgement call and I won’t criticise the way it was handled. First of all Ryanair was not rude to the woman, it was the male passenger. The cabin crew had no authority to have the man removed from the plane. To those who argue that the man should have been moved to another seat rather than the woman, I’d say it is quite possible that he would then be rude to the unfortunate passenger he was seated beside.
Only the flight captain has the authority to remove someone from an aircraft. On this occasion he or she also had to think on the impact this would have on the other 200 or so passengers who were already delayed. Had the man been taken from the plane his hold luggage would have to be located and removed from the plane. This would have meant negotiating a new and later departure slot, further inconveniencing all the other passengers.
For years vested interests have been criticising Ryanair while ignoring the fact the some 140 million passengers per year make use of the airline. The criticism has had some effect as we can see from this string. People who have never travelled on the airline are willing to voice criticism and say they will never fly with it.
