Report: Cancelled RyanAir flights from Alghero, Sardinia

liamo

Hi,

My wife and I were booked on a cancelled flight from Alghero, Sardinia to Dublin on Friday 12th Sept. All flights were cancelled because the airport was damaged by a tornado (throughout which we sat in our car outside the terminal doors unable to leave our car).

The RyanAir staff appeared to have no information other than the fact that all flights were cancelled. They didn't know when the airport would reopen nor did they know what would happen to the stranded passengers. Requests for information from the passengers started to turn into demands for action. In turn, the RyanAir staff started snapping and shouting at the passengers. In fairness to the RyanAir staff, they acted as anyone else would have - the fault is with the company for having no procedures in place to deal with this kind of thing. Or maybe they do and this was it!!

At one point, in an apparent attempt to relieve the pressure on the staff they made an announcement that, for further information, passengers should go to www.ryanair.com. Hah! Yeah, right! How exactly???

The absurdity of this seemed to have occurred to them (or was forcefully pointed out, more like) and they issued another announcement telling passengers to phone RyanAir customer services. Again - Hah, Yeah right!! Has anyone ever tried to phone RyanAir customer services?? I have - don't bother.

Initial suggestions from staff held out the possibility that passengers may be coached to Olbia airport and flown home from there. After an hour, passengers were being told that the next RyanAir flight would be on Monday. There was no information on how exactly they would accommodate all these passengers on a (presumably) already-mostly-booked plane, nor what the passengers were supposed to do in the meantime.

At this point, the airport was full (this is a small regional airport) of angry stranded passengers. There were many other cancelled RyanAir flights (among others) and holiday-makers kept arriving for the flight home blissfully unaware that they weren't going anywhere. There were families, small children, elderly people and the situation was starting to get tense and it was time to get out and make our own arrangements.

Fortunately, we had sub-notebook and, equally fortunately, there was wireless Internet available. We were able to go on-line and book a car from the airport so that we could drive to Olbia airport (2 hours away). We were also able to book flights from Olbia to Gatwick for the next morning and from there to Dublin. This would also necessitate an overnight in a hotel near Olbia airport.

The whole thing cost us circa €1,000 to get home but at least we were able to leave the airport with our travel arrangements in place. The alternative was to wait and trust RyanAir to get us home - something we weren't prepared to do. At that point, it looked like people had a three-day wait in the airport with no guarantee that there would be a place on the Monday flight.

One positive outcome from all this is that we have vowed to never, ever use RyanAir again unless there is no alternative. I had the impression that the company attitude was "F*** 'em" before this incident, however I had never actually experienced it.

I have been able to establish that the airport opened the next day at midday but I haven't been able to find out what happened to the other passengers. I didn't see any flights from there since then on the Dublin Arrivals listing.

Has anybody heard anything from friends or family?


Regards,

Liam

BuffyBot

More of a report/review, so moved there

liamo

A follow-up, if anyone's interested.

A friend of a friend was on the same cancelled Friday flight as me and ended up having to wait 3 days for the next RyanAir flight home.

At least I now feel justified in spending the money to get home the next day instead of waiting and hoping that RyanAir would take care of us.

cfitz

I recently decided not to travel with Ryanair again. They have their way of doing things and that's fair enough. But it's not for me.

I like the notion that an airline would take your money then generally do what they can to get you happily to your destination.

I just get the impression that Ryanair take your money then generally do what they can to get some more money and are not interested in whether you happily get to your destination.

Fair enough, but I'll do my business elsewhere.

GeturGun

cfitz wrote: »

I recently decided not to travel with Ryanair again. They have their way of doing things and that's fair enough. But it's not for me.

My thoughts exactly! I gave up last year. I thought there is no point in me whinging about them and then still giving them my business.