{"id":596358,"date":"2026-07-21T07:05:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T07:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/596358\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T07:05:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T07:05:11","slug":"reader-met-the-cold-hard-corporate-face-of-ryanair-during-bag-check-in-experience-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/596358\/","title":{"rendered":"Reader \u2018met the cold hard corporate face\u2019 of Ryanair during bag check-in experience \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is unsurprising perhaps that we see the number of travel<\/a>-themed stories increase in the summer time, although these three stories about Ryanair<\/a> have little or nothing to do with the sun-seeking season. <\/p>\n

Josephine, a \u201csenior citizen, widowed, living alone [and] striving to be as independent as possible\u201d, got in touch after paying on the double \u2013 or even treble \u2013 for one bag she wanted to check in on a flight to Italy<\/a>. <\/p>\n

She is a member of a walking club and booked a flight for a club holiday with Ryanair on September 29th, 2025, adding a 20kg check-in suitcase and paying a total of \u20ac299.40 for return flights and suitcase.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe outward flight time was slightly changed and when I went to check in online on May 19th, 2026, the book luggage popped up on the app again and I foolishly thought the luggage had been unbooked because of the flight time change,\u201d she writes. <\/p>\n

\u201cI booked my 20kg suitcase again,\u201d she continues. \u201cFeeling a bit stressed I was a bit slow confirming it in my banking app and was not sure this was completed so ended up paying two amounts of \u20ac102.\u201d<\/p>\n

Josephine contacted her bank immediately \u201cbut they could not cancel one of the transactions [and] advised me to contact Ryanair, I did several times, explained my error to a bot and online to an agent and told them I would only have one suitcase. I got no help and decided to wait until my return home.\u201d<\/p>\n

She flew home early last month and since then has \u201craised eight support cases\/queries with Ryanair, dealt with bots and online agents and have met the cold hard corporate face of the company\u201d.<\/p>\n

She says she has \u201cuploaded bank statements showing three payments, they say this is not proof. I accept I made a mistake, a company with any heart would refund me or indeed pick up on my error. I feel upset and dispirited and my confidence has taken a beating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Evelyn\u2019s story<\/p>\n

We also heard from Evelyn. <\/p>\n

\u201cI have the Ryanair app on my phone with which I booked a recent flight to Stansted for my husband and I. While working from home on Thursday I received a notification from Ryanair to check in for my flight on Friday, June 12th.\u201d <\/p>\n

Evelyn says she duly \u201cfollowed the prompts and downloaded boarding cards\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever when I arrived at Dublin Airport on Friday morning we discovered that the boarding cards were for my return journey from Stansted. I had not been prompted to check-in for departure from Dublin,\u201d she writes. <\/p>\n

\u201cI was forced to pay \u20ac110 for paper boarding cards as apparently the check-in for the flight had closed and I could not attempt to use the app to check in for my outbound journey while standing in the airport.\u201d <\/p>\n

She says she is annoyed because she reckons the Ryanair app was enabled to prompt her to check in for her return journey but not prompt her to check in from Dublin. \u201cI am seeking my \u20ac110 back or a form of credit to compensate me for relying on the Ryanair app but not being helped by it,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

Martina\u2019s story<\/p>\n

And then there was Martina\u2019s story.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy two sisters and I booked flights with Ryanair to travel from Ireland West Airport Knock to London Luton on December 4th, 2026 on the 8.30am flight returning on Sunday December 6th. We booked the flights on February 3rd and planned to spend two days shopping in London,\u201d she begins.<\/p>\n

On April 29th they all received emails telling them that their flight time had changed from 8.30am to 4pm on December 4th. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe were very disappointed with this, as it meant we either lost one of our shopping days or had to go the day before and incur an additional night\u2019s accommodation,\u201d she writes. <\/p>\n

She goes on to say that a few days after she received the email telling her that that flight time had changed she checked the Ryanair website and saw that the flight that she and her sisters had originally booked was still available for booking.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wrote to Ryanair by registered letter asking them to clarify the situation and stating that as the flight is still scheduled to fly, we would prefer to stick with this flight,\u201d she writes. <\/p>\n

\u201cA few days later I received an email stating that we were not entitled to any compensation as they had notified us of the change well in advance. In my letter, I had not asked for compensation. I had asked them if our original flight was still scheduled to fly as they were still selling it on the website. I replied to their email stating this. Eventually I got a reply telling me to phone the helpline.\u201d<\/p>\n

Martina writes that she \u201ctried phoning the help line, but no matter what I said to the automated system, it referred me back to the website. I then went on the online chat and once again was just advised to accept the suggested schedule change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just before sending us the email she checked the Ryanair website and the 8.30am flight on the Friday morning was still available to book. \u201cIt is so frustrating as we do not want to accept the changes if the flight we have booked is still going to fly.\u201d <\/p>\n

Ryanair\u2019s response<\/p>\n

When we highlighted these stories to the airline we were shown several sides of the airline.<\/p>\n

In response to our first query, a spokeswoman for the airline confirmed that Josephine had indeed paid on multiple occasions for the same 20kg checked-in bag. <\/p>\n

The spokeswoman said that \u201csince each of these were separate bookings, paid for separately, using separate forms of payment. They are valid bookings for additional bags and so there is no basis for refund. However, as a goodwill gesture, we will refund the second bag payment made on May 19th and this payment of \u20ac102 will be returned to the form of payment she used to make this second booking.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Ryanair drops policy of charging adults to sit with their children on flightsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

There was no such goodwill accommodation to be made when it came to our second reader, Evelyn. <\/p>\n

The spokeswoman said that \u201clike most passengers [she] has travelled with Ryanair before and [is] well aware that she has to check-in for her flight before arriving at the departure airport\u201d.<\/p>\n

The spokeswoman said Evelyn had been sent \u201ctwo reminder emails reminding her to check in for both her outbound and her return flights\u201d.<\/p>\n

She said our reader had \u201cflown previously on Ryanair services and is well aware that she has already agreed to check in online before arriving at the departure airport. Having failed to do so, she was properly charged the airport check-in fee at Dublin Airport on June 12th. Her claim that the Ryanair app is \u2018clearly unreliable\u2019 is false and unfounded. She was sent email reminders to check in and she failed to do so. This was nothing to do with the Ryanair app as she wrongly claims.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it came to Martina\u2019s story, the Ryanair spokeswoman came close to admitting it was at fault or at least had made some class of error during the process.<\/p>\n

The response noted that the original booking had been made last February \u201clong before the Winter 2026 schedule had been finalised\u201d.<\/p>\n

The spokeswoman said that in April \u201ca second flight was added to the schedule from Knock to Luton but, unusually, it was assigned the same flight number as the 8.30am departure. This was an error by our flight scheduling team and not an error in our system.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not entirely sure what difference that makes to our reader, to be honest; it was an error made by Ryanair that affected her. Whether it was made by the flight scheduling team or was an error in the Ryanair system is entirely irrelevant to Martina, we would have thought. <\/p>\n

The spokeswoman went on to say that Martina and her sisters \u201cwere schedule changed to the later sector, but since the original flight was never cancelled (it continues to operate but under the same flight number), all passengers received a comms email on June 10th explaining the time change and giving them the option to accept the flight change, change the flight for free, or apply for a full refund. Since the original 8.30am flight is still operating, [Martina] and her party remain booked on that flight, and she need take no further action in this case.\u201d<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t know about you but that seems pretty confusing to us. It also seemed pretty confusing to Martina when we sent Ryanair\u2019s response to her. And it was confusing to someone else booked on the same early morning flight and then apparently moved to the later one who also contacted us. <\/p>\n

We also think it is worthwhile to include what else the Ryanair spokeswoman had to say to us.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs you will see from these four cases [also including John\u2019s story about the name change issue highlighted here<\/a>] the Ryanair booking system is simple to use, it is straightforward, it does not make name changes or \u2018miscommunications\u2019 with passengers. If a passenger booked an additional bag, or fails to check in online before arriving at the departure airport, or confirms the wrong name in a booking, then the fault lies with the passenger, not with the Ryanair system or the Ryanair app. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Ryanair denies its booking system changes names. This video suggests otherwiseOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cAs confirmed above, we will provide a refund of one bag fee to [Josephine] although clearly she made two separate baggage bookings on the same day using two different payment methods and so this was not a problem with the Ryanair system but rather a passenger error.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere [sic] errors did not arise from any \u2018confusing correspondence from the airline\u2019, which is yet another invention on your part, unsupported by any evidence whatsoever. We sell over 700,000 seats every day to consumers in over 40 different countries. Our systems, and our communications are clear and readily comprehensible. Please stop inventing spurious claims that obvious passenger errors are due to \u2018unreliable apps\u2019 or \u2018confusing communications\u2019 when, as in these cases, they are clearly not.\u201d<\/p>\n

As we said in response, we do not and never have invented \u201cspurious claims\u201d about Ryanair or any other company. We simply share our readers\u2019 stories with the airline (in this case), give it the chance to respond and allow our readers to make judgments on what they have read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is unsurprising perhaps that we see the number of travel-themed stories increase in the summer time, although…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":596359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,2190,26,18,19,17,252481,6641,623],"class_list":["post-596358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-cost-of-living","tag-dublin-airport","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-knock-airport","tag-pricewatch","tag-ryanair"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}