Ryanair locked in £165 row with family over boarding pass ‘error’
A family is locked in dispute with Ryanair after the airline claimed they ‘unchecked themselves’ and refuses to reimburse their £165 check-in fee.
Damian Lloyd, from Neath in Wales, says he checked in his family a month before they were due to fly to Gran Canaria and brought printed boarding passes to the airport.
But when the barcodes failed to scan, Ryanair staff said it must be a ‘computer glitch’, asked them to pay for new boarding passes, but said they could claim the money back later.
However, the airline is now claiming the family actually ‘unchecked’ themselves online and refuses to pay up, the BBC reports.
Mr Lloyd denies this and with neither side backing down, Ryanair has referred the family to a dispute resolution service.
Health and safety manager Mr Lloyd had booked a 10-day holiday for him, his wife and two daughters in July.
A regular flyer, the 50-year-old said he’s never had any issues with Ryanair’s extra fees before and happily paid more to reserve seats on the plane.
However, when the boarding passes didn’t scan he was left ‘in total shock’.
A Ryanair employee working on the check-in desk was also perplexed.
‘He looked on the computer, and our names and seat numbers came up. But for some reason [the boarding passes] weren’t scanning. He didn’t know why,’ Mr Lloyd explained.
Because it was an early morning flight, the employee was unable to phone Ryanair’s customer service as it hadn’t opened yet.
Mr Lloyd was told passengers are not allowed to board the flight without a boarding pass, so either they paid for new passes or wait for customer services to open and miss their flights.
With no flights available till three days later, Mr Lloyd decided to pay the fee for new passes – which totalled £165.
He said the check-in employee said it must be a computer glitch and told him he could claim the money back.
However, when he made his claim he was told the issue wasn’t a fault with the airline’s computer system.
Initially the airline claimed Mr Lloyd had not verified his identity, but then agreed this was ‘inaccurate’.
It then said he had ‘unchecked’ the family online a day before the flight.
Mr Lloyd denies this saying he has no memory of going onto Ryanair’s website again after he checked in.
‘If I had made the mistake I’d put my hands in the air and pay, but I did have the right passes,’ he said.
The airline has referred Mr Lloyd to AviationADR, an independent airline dispute resolution scheme, as their dispute cannot be resolved.
A Ryanair spokesperson told the BBC: ‘[The family] unchecked themselves on the website on July 22 and ignored the pop-up that warned them they would have to check in again and generate new boarding passes.’
They said the family were therefore correctly charged a fee to issue new boarding passes.
The dispute comes after Ryanair charged an elderly couple £110 to print their boarding passes when they downloaded their return ones by mistake.
Ruth Jaffe, 79, and her husband Peter, 80, were flying from London Stansted to Bergerac in France when they accidentally downloaded the wrong passes.
Ryanair was recently named the worst airline when it comes to hidden fees, with Wizz Air coming second.
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