Hundreds of holidaymakers… missed their flights from Stansted airport yesterday after Ryanair, the cut-price airline, failed to open enough check-in desks. Only 11 such desks, or “bag dropsâ€, were open on one of the busiest departure days of the summer to service the airline’s 255 flights.
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0 responses to “Good old Ryanair”
But, hey, you can bandy figures about and make them say anything. I mean that’s at least one for every 24 flights.
Yeah, that’s a good point. Ungrateful passenger bastards.
Interesting comments on that piece (stories about Ryanair are the exception to the rule about user-generated content). Particularly interesting that one woman says they took off with her luggage but without her. That’s a major security breach. They might finally have broken a regulation the state gives a damn about. Fingers crossed the police hear about it and decide to follow up.
That’s a really good point; the last transatlantic flight I was on was delayed for takeoff for almost two hours because there was a checked bag whose owner never turned up for the flight; naturally it had been the first bag on so they had to unload the entire cargo hold to get it.
any passenger that causes a flight to delayed by a stunt like that should be charged the cost of the delay, or £100 per passenger which ever is more, airlines already got their credit card details, that’ll soon stop all this last call nonsense
plus they should be banned from flying at least with that airline
as fer ryanair, i always get to desk and gate early, i used to hate queuing but with an ipod, i just close my eyes, then again i’ve not flown ryanair fer ages – prestwick having being turned into a dump airside
>Particularly interesting that one woman says they took off with her luggage but without her. That’s a major security breach
The captain is allowed to decide to fly with an un-accompanied bag on board if he wants to.
> The captain is allowed to decide to fly with an un-accompanied bag on board if he wants to.
Really? Blimey. I suppose we are dealing with suicide bombers these days, but still, there’s a bloody good reason why most pilots don’t do that. And who thinks the reason why a Ryanair pilot might ignore that danger is more to do with a careful consideration of the risks and less to do with having O’Leary on his back?
I’m annoyed by all this crap about Ryanair being fairly convenient if you just carry hand baggage and check in online. I tried it, and there’s a big list of entirely stupid reasons why they won’t allow you to check in online, even without hold luggage. Talking to a couple of girls in the queue at Stansted, one of the reasons is having an American passport — Ryanair’s web form rejects the passport number. If you book a return ticket and take hold luggage in just one direction, you’re not allowed to check in online in the other direction. And so on. As I keep saying, good customer service is not expensive; in many cases, it saves the company money. O’Leary’s just one of those idiots who refuses to believe this. Like the fuckwit running Ikea.
>Really? Blimey. I suppose we are dealing with suicide bombers these days, but still, there’s a bloody good reason why most pilots don’t do that. And who thinks the reason why a Ryanair pilot might ignore that danger is more to do with a careful consideration of the risks and less to do with having O’Leary on his back?
All true, but there is also this: The captain is supposed to decide based on the safetly of his flight. Now a genuinely AWOL passenger is a problem, but in this case the captain can actually be prety much certain that the reason this passenger hasn’t made it is that they are attempting to fight their way through the choas to get to their plane, but has failed. i.e. The would be with their bag if they actually could ybe. That’s not the same kind of threat.
I’ve never known that a captain can override a policy, but if it’s a discretionary point, they make the call. In cases of a passenger not turning up, there are many reasons that can happen. The main ones that I know of generally involve connecting flights.
1) They were on a connecting flight that was late; baggage makes it to the connection faster than the human especially at Heathrow and large airports where one must go through secondary security because of the config of the gates.
2) Their connecting flight was outrageously early and they flew standby on the next leg, accepting that their baggage would be on the next flight.
3) The airports checked bag security hand inspected the bag.
4) The airport is having known issues with excessive queues and wait times
5) The flight was delayed but them pushed up to an earlier departure and passengers haven’t stayed close to the gate to hear the change (also happens with last minute gate changes)
I’ve spoken to several pilots (and a ship’s captain!) that they have to manage between reasonable security risk and fiscal responsibility. If there’s a reasonable explanation for the missing passenger, then they’ll probably assume the financial delay of the flight outweighs the security risk. There’s likely to be more violence on board if they cause half the plane to miss their connecting flights ;-)
i think ryan air is a load of crap advertising cheap flights which are pretty impossible to book
Personally I find that most cheap flights are really easy to book. Mind you, once you add taxes, booking free, credit card fee, check-in fee, baggage fee, looking-at-their-fucking-website fee, it all starts to be a little less cheap.
I think Simon means that it’s impossible to get the advertised prices. Which it is, often in defiance of the law.