Ryanair defends charging elderly couple £110 for two boarding passes, despite online fury

By Linsey McNeill
15/08/2023
Home » Ryanair defends charging elderly couple £110 for two boarding passes, despite online fury

Ryanair has defended charging an elderly couple £55 each after they accidentally downloaded the wrong boarding passes, saying that they had ‘ignored’ an email reminding them to check in online.

In fact, the couple HAD checked in for their flight from London Stansted to Bergerac online – and paid extra to sit together – but Ruth Jaffe, aged 79, and her husband Peter, aged 80, printed out the boarding passes for their return flight instead of the outbound leg by mistake.

Ryanair was slammed online after a post on the social media site X (previously known as Twitter) by their daughter criticising the £110 fee was seen by more than 13 million users and attracted more than 157,000 likes since it was re-posted by LBC radio presenter James O”Brien.

One user said: “It’s high time extortion in the name of ‘low cost’ is stopped,” another said they wouldn’t let their elderly parents fly with any low-cost carrier ‘with all the unknown fees’, and one wrote: “@Ryanair are the worst airline! Should be avoided at all cost!”

One person claimed Ryanair was ‘taking advantage of old people’ but others said they’d been charged the same fee when they hadn’t managed to print their boarding passes.

Ryanair, which is known for its sarcastic social media posts, didn’t directly respond to the couple’s daughter on X, suggesting instead that she messaged them via Facebook, but a spokesperson told Travel Gossip: “In accordance with Ryanair’s T&C’s, which these passengers agreed to at the time of booking, they failed to check-in online before arriving at Stansted airport (11 Aug) despite receiving an email reminder (10 Aug) to check-in online.

“These passengers were correctly charged the airport check-in fee (£55 per passenger).

“All passengers travelling with Ryanair agree to check-in online before arriving at their departure airport and all passengers are sent an email/SMS, reminding them to do so 24hrs before departure.

“We regret that these passengers ignored their email reminder and failed to check-in online.”

Latest News

Loading