It was troubling to read the story of “Ruth, 79, and Peter Jaffe, 80” who “were “horrified” after being charged £110 by Ryanair for printing their tickets at the airport.” Ahead of a flight from Stansted to Bergerac (France, apparently, not Jersey), the accidentally printed out their return tickets instead of their outbound tickets, they arrived at the Ryanair desk and were charged £110 to have the correct tickets printed out in order to get their boarding cards. Their daughter posted on X, formerly known as twitter, “£110 for 2 pieces of paper which took 1 minute. Shame on you.” Yes, the whole thing is a rip-off, but what, I would ask her, were you expecting? This is Ryanair you are talking about it.
Mrs Jaffe and her daughter railed against Ryanair’s policy of charging people to sit together – “It’s also the money-making aspect, like the fact we had to pay extra to sit together“, said Mrs Jaffe, completely missing the point of how Ryanair makes its money – and complained about the airline’s “very confusing” website. I agree with everything they say and the way I deal with it is very simple: I don’t fly with Ryanair, I never have and I hope I never will.
None of this is to suggest I don’t have some sympathy with the Jaffes. I am not the sharpest tool in the box when it comes to pretty well anything that isn’t entirely straightforward and having briefly experimented with the Ryanair website in the past I was easily persuaded that the company was not for me. A flight which appeared to come in at a bargain bucket price of something like a fiver soon ballooned to something like £200 when I added on luxuries like booking a seat and taking luggage. The Jaffe’s could have been me.
I know Ryanair stick to their rules, too. In being informed of the story, they said this:
“All passengers travelling with Ryanair agree to check-in online before arriving at their departure airport and all passengers are sent an email/SMS, reminding them to do so 24 hrs before departure. We regret that these passengers ignored their email reminder and failed to check-in online.”
Blunt, to the point of rudeness, this is how the airline operates. When Mrs Jaffe added, “I’d like to be given back my money please. Having bought the tickets in advance, I’m very pissed off about it,” I suspect the airline would simply say “I refer the lady to the answer I gave some moments ago.”
I’ll close this blog with another comment from Mrs Jaffe who says this: “It’s fantastic how people have supported us. Other members of the family who are flying to meet us are refusing to go on Ryanair.” Well done to those family members who are taking a principled stand by not going on Ryanair. But what a shame that at least not one of them could perhaps have warned this senior couple of their obligations as Ryanair passengers. This is how low cost air travel works and if you don’t follow the rules, it’s not as cheap as you might think it is.
