Paddy Clarke from Dublin got in touch to complain about Ryanair gift vouchers. He received two with a value of €200 each, but his experience in trying to redeem them has left him “very, very frustrated and indeed poorer.” He says there are two phoneline options to redeem vouchers but on the day he tried “and indeed several times since”, the cheaper option, which is chargeable at national rate, “was either not working or on the one occasion it was simply of no assistance as the menu options did not cover gift vouchers, nor indeed did it offer general live operator assistance”.

So Clarke had to call a premium rate number which costs €1.75 per minute. This number was answered immediately. “Although I had established the relevant flight numbers for my three short holiday flights, the operator persisted in dragging out the call for approximately 30 minutes at a cost to me of €50 plus.” He explains that because the expiry date on the vouchers was the end of this month he was in a “catch- 22 position in that to terminate the call would result in even more expense on a necessary repeat call”.

Part of the delay was due to the operator requesting a reference number from the gift voucher which unhelpfully was not the printed reference number on the actual voucher. To further complicate matters, “Ryanair chose to convert my two €200 vouchers into eight €50 vouchers, with a consequential phone-time delay in relaying eight alpha/numeric numbers to an already bewildered customer. I presume that this attitude is generated by company policy.” He still has some vouchers left and is dismayed that there appears to be no alternative to using the premium number again. “Ryanair will not accept complaints via e-mail yet will reply in this way, if they choose.”

More bad news today from Aer Lingus. The airline announced that from Thursday its baggage charges will increase by as much as 50 per cent.

The letter pasted below appeared in The Irish Times this morning. It makes for interesting reading.

Madam, - I read with interest the report of May 1st by Conor Pope on the exorbitant prices being charged by “low-cost” airlines to fly to Bristol and other nearby cities for the Heineken Cup rugby final.

Surprise, surprise, flight FR506 is now departing again at 6.50am with a seat price of €229.99. I would be very interested to hear Mr Peter Sherard’s explanation for this. - Yours, etc,
TERRI KIERNAN MERLIN, Sarah Curran Avenue, Dublin 16.

Aer Lingus has been forced into an embarrassing climbdown and is to offer economy class seats to all the customers who booked €5 business class flights to the US “in error”. “Following a full investigation of the booking error undertaken yesterday evening by the company, it appears that some customers may have genuinely believed that they were making a booking in economy class,” the company said . It said it was going to contact affected passengers so they could rebook their travel arrangements and described the error as “regrettable”.

And that’s putting it mildly. Within hours of the sorry tale hitting the headlines at home, news organisations in Sydney, London and New York and dozens of other places in between had picked up the story. Not only that but Aer Lingus also had to endure a lecture in good customer service from Ryanair, of all companies.

All in all not a good day then.

Ryanair increased its baggage and airport check-in charges today and has issued a warning that it will continue to increase them in an effort to “encourage” its passengers to travel with hand luggage only. Baggage charges have gone up from €6 to €9 per bag while check-in fees have increased from €3 to €4. My old friend Peter Sherrard, who has repeatedly - and wrongly - accused me of publishing “baseless” complaints about Ryanair, says the move will help “encourage” passengers to “avoid” the charges by bring hand luggage only and checking-in online, which is free. He said the airline would keep increasing its charges until it has reaches it target of encouraging at least half of its passengers to travel with hand luggage only. How long do you think it’ll take before Aer Lingus follows suit?

Travellers flying with no-frills airlines are still paying more than the advertised price of the ticket, according to a Holiday Which? report published this morning. Despite changes which have forced airlines to include compulsory taxes and charges in their headline prices, budget airlines are devising new ways in which to levy extra charges on passengers, the report found. Holiday Which found Ryanair to be the worst offender while Monarch Airlines, bmibaby and Easyjet all came in for some criticism. “We’re disappointed to see the major budget airlines are introducing charges for services that were once included in the full cost of the ticket. Ryanair’s charge to use its check-in desk is especially unfair. The only way to avoid this is not to check any luggage into the hold,” Lorna Cowan, Editor, Holiday Which? “Although the airlines view these services as optional, who would go on a week’s holiday without checking a bag into the hold?,” she asked.

It looks like there’s going to be no let up in the row between the Commission for Aviation Regulation and Ryanair following the nasty exchange between the airline CEO Michael O’Leary and the head of the commission Cathal Guiomard on RTE last night . The pair clashed after the publication of the European Consumer Centre survey which found that Irish airlines were the most-complained-about in Europe.
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On a recent 9.25am Ryanair flight from Faro to Dublin, a reader says she was charged €2 for a copy of the Irish Independent , 30 cent above its normal retail price of €1.70. She also says the copy of the paper she paid €2 for looked like it had been “recycled copy from the earlier Dublin to Faro flight”. She asks whether it is legal to charge more than the cover price and the short answer is yes. The cover price on newspapers and magazines is no more than a recommended retail price.

We contacted Ryanair to see whether it was actually charging €2 for the paper and if did “recycle” copies left behind by passengers on the outward journey and sell them to those on the inbound journey. We received the following statement: “Once again this is a baseless complaint. It was made perfectly clear to this passenger before they chose to buy the newspaper that the on-board cost is €2 and they chose to buy it.”

Ryanair’s 2008 calendar features ladies from from its cabin crew in various states of undress. I haven’t seen it but according to the back page of Business This Week in today’s Irish Times, “some of the snaps are quite steamy”. In April Nicola from Stansted wears little more than a life jacket while cowboy boots are enough for Magda in Charleroi in June. There is also a pic of a Ryanair imagined calendar from Aer Lingus. It stars a frumpy woman of advancing years by the name of Bridget pouring tea. She’s wearing a twee, all-in-one bathing suit decorated in shamrocks. The calendar goes on sale tomorrow on board Ryanair flights. It costs £5/€7 and the proceeds go to Angels Quest, which provides respite care for children with special needs.

Ryanair has announced that it is to make its web check-in free. Hurray you might be forgiven for shouting until you read further down the breathlessly written press release to the bit where they say they are also to introduce charges for people who don’t use the web check-in service. From September 20th, the simple act of presenting yourself at the check-in desk is going to cost you €3. It absolutely beggars belief. If Ryanair could charge you for the air you breath on board their flights they would.

I was interested to read that Ryanair accounted for 60 per cent of the complaints made by passengers to the Irish aviation regulator last year despite the fact that the airline is responsible fror just 35 per cent of the flights from Irish airports. Complaints are concentrated around flight cancellations and delays, according to the Commission for Aviation Regulation. Aer Lingus, meanwhile, attract more complaints from people denied boarding because of overbooking.

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In excess of 4 million people logged on to the Ryanair website yesterday to take advantage of the company’s offer of free flights. As part of the “sale” the airline has agreed to pay all taxes and airport charges as well, a move which will cost it more than €7m. Apparently the airline’s website had its busiest day yesterday and was brought to its knees a couple of times in the first few hours after the offer went live such was the demand for freebies

“This is about getting bums on seats. We are paying to get passengers into our planes - we’ll be paying the tax that they would normally have to pay. There’s no point in flying planes empty,” a Ryanair spokesman said. The company is banking on recouping its costs through the sale of add on such as car hire, hotels and in flight food and drink. While consumers clearly liked the move, eco-campaigners were less pleased and called the sale “grossly irresponsible”. “Passengers may be getting a free ride, but the planet certainly isn’t. It is unbelievable that Ryanair is resorting to such tactics,” a Friends of the Earth spokesman said. Friends of the Earth are unlikely to make many friends with the complaint and anyways, if the planes are going to be flying anyways does it make any difference to the planet if they are half empty are full?

Max Wilson from Co Kerry sent us a mail after reading last week’s piece on airline rip-offs. He points out that while an Aer Arann spokesman was critical of other airlines’ charges, it is not above imposing some of its own. The airline increased the charge for carrying golf clubs from €15 to €30 per trip earlier this year, he writes. He was told this was because “golf clubs and other sporting equipment are not viewed as general baggage and require special screening and handling from our baggage handlers”. He questions the notion of “special screening” and points out that the handling is the same now as it has been for the past six years.

It is fair to say that when Aer Lingus announced it was to charge people up to €15 for pre-booking seats on short-haul flights within Europe earlier this month, it received a fair amount of negative attention.

“What’s next?”, fumed one correspondent to this paper’s letter’s page. “Billing per minute for use of the lavatory? Per-second billing to use the reading light? Flat charge for using use the ‘call attendant’ button?”

While his anger is perfectly understandable, the correspondent might perhaps have been better off keeping schtum and not giving the suits in Dublin airport fresh ideas for generating revenue. Loose talk costs money, especially when airlines seem to be constantly scrabbling round for more so-called extras that they can charge us for.

In the last couple of years, while the base price of most airline tickets out of this country has fallen significantly, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of stealth charges. As well as taxes and airport charges, there are baggage handling fees; more stringent excess baggage charges; transaction fees; boarding fees, seat booking fees and high administration fees for simple transactions - all on top of the savage prices charged for the most miserable of sandwiches.
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Ryanair is cheap and when everything goes right, the airline is hard to fault. When things go wrong however, you really, really don’t want to be relying on them to get you home as a story which appeared in The Irish Times earlier this week proves. Hundreds of passengers were left stranded in northern Spain after their plane was diverted to a different airport. The flight from Vitoria to Dublin was then cancelled due to heavy fog and their plane was diverted a couple of hundred kilometres west to Santander before returning home to Dublin passengerless. Bad weather can mess up flight schedules and is outside the control of airlines but the manner in which the passengers were subsequently treated by Ryanair staff is absolutely outrageous. And the very thought of using the airline to cross the Atlantic fills me with dread. No matter how cheap they claim they will be able to sell tickets for.

From The Irish Times

“Passenger Séamus Fingleton told The Irish Times they were offered flights from Girona yesterday evening, 36 hours after their scheduled departure and six hours’ by road, or Madrid this evening, 60 hours after their scheduled departure and four hours by road.

Mr Fingleton said passengers were told they had to make their own way to these airports. “When I asked how to get to either, I was told that I could drive. There were no car hire companies open in Vitoria.”

Passengers queued for four hours to get this information and were not provided with refreshments or assistance, he said.

Ryanair apologised to passengers but said the safety of crew and passengers was its main priority. A spokesman said the flight was diverted due to unsafe weather conditions and passengers on the inbound flight were bussed from Santander to Vitoria.

“It was not possible to bus passengers from Vitoria to Santander for the return flight. The aircraft was forced to return empty to Dublin because the crew would have exceeded their safe flying limits for the day had they waited for the Vitoria passengers. Flight FR 7153 was cancelled as a result.

“All passengers were offered transfer via the next available flight from Vitoria or a transfer via an alternative Ryanair airport or a full refund. The majority of passengers returned home yesterday and today via Vitoria, Madrid, Biarritz, Reus and Girona airports.” Mr Fingleton said he got a taxi to Bilbao and flew to Barcelona, where he spent the night before flying with a different airline to Dublin, all at his own expense.”

Cliodhna Geraghty sent us an e-mail after having her booking on an Aer Lingus flight to France for Ireland’s rugby World Cup game against Argentina unceremoniously cancelled.
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Aer Lingus has announced its intention to charge passengers as much as €15 for the privilege of choosing where they can sit on its planes. Rather than be dismayed by the new charges we should all be absolutely delighted because - according to Aer Lingus - they have been introduced, not as a cynical money making exercise but in response to customer demand. Today’s move follows the recent 25 per cent increase in the airlines baggage-handling charges which Aer Lingus introduced without any fanfare, just two months after they brought in the charges in the first place. Another move which, presumably, was prompted by customer demand.

Last week’s item on Ryanair’s reluctance to return the taxes due to people who have paid for, but not taken, flights with the airline prompted other people to get in touch.

Peter Lannon recently booked a Ryanair flight from Dublin to Bristol. Initially he had booked a flight leaving on a Monday morning but as his requirements changed he booked a second flight for the evening before. “At the airport I went to the Ryanair ticket sales desk to inform them that I would not be taking the Monday morning flight and I was advised by the girl working there that I could write to Ryanair and request a refund of the taxes and charges.” He did so, and got a reply stating that he wasn’t entitled to a refund. “What I find even more strange is that on a recent flight I chose the insurance option by mistake, yet when I e-mailed later to cancel and ask for a refund, it was processed with no problems! So how can Ryanair have admin fees for one refund but none for another?”
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