A woman was left furious at the weekend after Ryanair apparently charged her parents £110 to print their boarding passes. On Twitter she went viral after sharing their story.
The poster, @old_school_alps, claims her parents "in their 70s and 80s" made a mistake when downloading their boarding passes to their mobiles. To be able to board the flight they then had to shell out the massive sum for "two pieces of paper".
Over 13,000 people retweeted the post and 130,000 liked it. People were mostly shocked at the airline’s policy and some said it made them "rage".
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The couple’s daughter wrote online: "Hey, Ryanair, my parents who are in their 70s and 80s, had accidentally downloaded the return flight boarding card instead of the outgoing ones and you charged them £110 to print them at the airport. £110 for two pieces of paper which took one minute. Shame on you."
In the comments, people were furious. One person said: "I have parents of same age group. I can feel the rage.."
However, others were confused at what went wrong. The couple’s daughter clarified: "You have to download at least two hours in advance. Because they’d paid extra to sit next to each other (dad’s disabled) they gave them the option of downloading the return ticket.
"They did that by mistake instead of outgoing. Honest mistake. My dad is disabled so travelling is stressful enough."
When someone asked why the charge was so high she added: "Apparently it’s £55, or at least that’s what they charged my folks for each of theirs. I don’t fly short haul anymore haven’t had to look at their T&Cs in a long time. £40 for two would be annoying but I wouldn’t be fuming like I am now."
Another commenter said: "I wouldn't make an exception for most people because these rules are a reason, but I think in this case Ryanair should refund the money."
"Sounds like I will not be using their service," another person wrote. While a woman said: "We had a similar issue and they charged us £60 to get back home… never again!
"We were told to check in through the app, it wouldn’t work and we showed them this. The only option was to pay."
A man added: "I wish there were better options, I use to think flying was fun but now not so much."
A woman named Suzi noted: "I had a huge row with them because I had my boarding pass on my phone and the Wi-Fi didn’t work at the airport so I couldn’t download it. They tried to charge me to print it until I made such a fuss that they backed off."
But, some commenters said that you had to follow the rules when it came to airlines. Plus, that the cheap airlines have low fares for a reason.
One man said: "You get what you pay for with them… as the old adage goes: good, fast, cheap – you only get to pick two."
A Ryanair spokesperson told Daily Star: "As per Ryanair’s T&C’s, which these passengers agreed to at the time of booking, these passengers failed to check-in online for their outbound flight from Stansted Airport (11 Aug) despite being advised to do so via email the day before travel (10 Aug) and therefore were correctly charged the airport check-in fee of £55 per passenger."
The rules state that if you don’t check in online up to two hours before your boarding flight you can still check in at the airport up until 40 minutes before departure. However, if this is the case you’ll be charged the airport check in fee.
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