Ryanair fails again!

Well I had a few more posts in the bag before this one but I am in a hotel room that I do not want to be in, in a place I am not supposed to be in, all because of Ryanair.

Well, my Dad is ill, badly ill, he was until a couple of days ago in intensive care with a new problem on top of the ongoing lung problems.  So I decided to come back from Moscow earlier than I aimed to, as soon as I could after getting my new visa so I could return, so after getting a new visa I rescheduled my flight back to the uk with BMI, then booked the best flight in terms of convenience that turned out to be with Ryanair. I have had my issues with them in the past so I have refused to fly with them for around 10 years until a few months ago when I had to fly with them due to a similar situation and was pleasantly surprised, so I booked with them again, and got my wife to do the same when she decided to come with me.

So, we arrived and checked into what is laughingly called Bournemouth International airport, went through security to told a few minutes before we were due to board that the flight was delayed by 2hrs and 1o minutes, this was fine as we were comfortable, and I had internet access on my laptop via my mobile phone.  It was a little later than that and we were informed of this, again fine.  When we finally got on the plane to take our seats, as it is a free-for-all system we sat down to be shouted at my a rather tired looking air stewardess that she was holding the seats for a group.  This is agianst the rules of the airline, and the group failed to materialise, so my wife and I were far from each other for no good reason.

After the plane stood there for a while I asked if I could go to the toilet, the stewardess said we were not moving for a while, so of course it would be fine.  I went to a toilet that I was assured had remained closed for this flight until then to find pee all over the floor and in the toilet bowl, and used tissues spread around so I took these photos on my mobile phone:-

After about 20 mins of discovering the hygiene issues of a newly ‘cleaned’ Ryanair plane we were told the flight was cancelled due to a strike by air traffic controllers, this obviously unforseen, or was it? Well the same flight two nights earlier was cancelled as the strikes had been happening all week, so not so unforseen.  When we got off the plane there were no Ryanair representatives as we were told on the plane, instead we dealt with servisair groundstaff who told us to go home, and we ‘may’ get a refund if we chose not to travel the next day.  Well, we live in Moscow, they basically accused us of lying about that at first, and the same again about my Dad being in hospital, then eventually said we could travel on the re-scheduled flight, or ‘try’ to reclaim the lost money for that flight, and not the cost of the newly re-booked flight which of course would be much more.  They then said at this point to book into a ‘cheap hotel’ giving no indication of what was considered ‘cheap’ by Ryanair, or else  Ryanair probably would not reimburse us the hotel cost or the taxi cost.  So when we got out to get a taxi there was a huge queue, again Ryanair did not provide transport, it had to come out of our pocket, and here we are in the ‘nearest’ hotel.

So the moral of the story so far, NEVER travel with Ryanair…….I will continue this tomorrow after the replacement flight, with more adevntures seeing if someone finally cleaned the toilets, and the rude staff got any nicer.

Related posts:

1. First Moscow Visit – Part 1: On the Flight Well I am on the flight on the way to...
2. Weekend in St Petersburg with the In-laws As a finale to their enforced extension to their visit...
3. Travel Photography – Yekaterinburg Part 1 We were looking to travel somewhere at the last minute...
4. Where have I been? – Part 2 – UK and Spain When I left Moscow I was only in the UK...
5. First Moscow Visit – Part 3: Quiet reflections We are on the flight on the way home now...

This entry was posted on Friday, February 26th, 2010 at 4:25 am. It is filed under Blog, Travel and tagged with Alicante, Bournemouth, dirty, Fail, Flight, Rant, Ryanair, Travel, UK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.