There is no love lost between us and Ryanair. I won’t fly on most ultra-low-cost carriers because I’m not willing to pay for virtually every little thing. But I will NEVER, EVER fly on Ryanair because they take Spirit & Allegiant and say, “Hold my beer.” I mean, the fact that they haven’t put pay toilets onto their planes yet amazes me. And I think that’s my main issue with them – they just try to see how much they can get away with, and their CEO’s “I don’t give a crap” attitude on top of it. It just IRKS ME SO MUCH!
To add insult to injury, they’re even being pains even during pandemics!
We’re written about the “joys” of Ryanair before:
- They’ve asked their flight attendants to watch their weight in an effort to save money on fuel
- They’ve considered “standing room only” seats, described as “barstools with seatbelts”
- They were the recipient of what could possibly have been one of the worst (best) complaint letters ever
You’d think (hope?) that during a worldwide pandemic, they would, I don’t know, mellow a little? They haven’t.
Want A Refund? Ha!
The law in the U.K. is if your flight is cancelled, you’re due a refund within 7 days. Apparently, few, if any of the airlines are following that, and are pushing vouchers as much as possible. That’s understandable, to a point – there are thousands of people who are due refunds and airlines are concerned about giving money back and having that much less funds in their coffers. So different airlines have done what they can, in different ways.
- British Airways and Virgin Atlantic make you call to get a refund
- EasyJet makes you fill out a form to request a refund.
- Ryanair? They say they’ll give you your refund after the coronavirus crisis has passed. And they fully admit that could take months. Or you can request a voucher now and then ask to trade it for a refund…a year from now. Too bad, so sad.
And about that social distancing thing…
Like the U.S., the U.K. is requiring the middle seats on flights to be empty, to increase the distance between passengers. Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary wants no part of it.
“We can’t make money on 66 percent load factors,” he told the Financial Times. “Even if you do that, the middle seat doesn’t deliver any social distancing, so it’s kind of an idiotic idea that doesn’t achieve anything anyway.”
O’Leary added that if the government imposed the rule, it would have to pay for the middle seat “or we won’t fly.”
Quite a charmer, that Michael O’Leary. Maybe his airline shouldn’t fly, and it would put all of us out of the misery that Ryanair causes.
#stayhealthy #stayathome #washyourhands
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
4 comments
I hope you like the train (I do!) because if Ryanair goes away intra-Europe flights will become very expensive.
The US is not require ng middle seats be empty. Flights are going out full.
Rob at head For Points made a very convincing case that Ryanair and more scrupulous airlines (pretty much everybody else) can make similar money while keeping middle seats empty. O’Leary is a weasel who’s out to lunch perhaps even more than Scott Kirby. I was disinclined to fly Ryanair before, now I’d rather pay more for an airline that at least pretends to have ethics.
At least ryanair does give you the option for a refund and is talking about middle seats.
Lufthansa group tries everything they can to avoid a refund (no option on the website for a long time), doesn’t leave the middle seat empty (“people wear masks anyway”) and now pretty openly thinks about bankruptcy instead of a 9 billion cash injection from the government because they don’t want strings attached.
OH! That would mean all money, all vouchers and so on of their customers are lost and they can do with their staff (which they find pretty overpaid) whatever they want.
It seems I always post here when it’s going against ryanair 🙂 yes, they can be a pain but mostly it’s just o leary taking the press coverage of his loud mouth as free advertising.
When this is all over you really should try them out 🙂 just keep in mind to follow their rules (which aren’t much worse than other companies, it’s basically just the luggage thing where you need to book priority boarding and observe the trolley measures, as well as checking in online – not so complicated)