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Wow, just wow. This will be a tough read for anyone familiar with UK 261.
Surely there’s an argument for schools to teach a little less of the abstract manga carta stuff, and bit more of the practical consumer rights stuff.
It’s good Daily Mail fodder, with nice pictures for the readers. But nowhere does it say To Where Was Her Flight Cancelled?
If London/Essex then Eurostar is surely not unknown as a fastish way home. If further afield then I’m wondering why no mention of another airline having been considered. After all, this was to return to work on time in a job where she was still new.
“She was informed by the airliner that her 7:30pm flight to Manchester the next day had been cancelled as a result of strike action by French air traffic control staff and that she would have to rearrange her journey to a later date.”
I believe Northern Lass has mentioned before that there are no trains to Manchester other than handcars.
It’s good Daily Mail fodder, with nice pictures for the readers. But nowhere does it say To Where Was Her Flight Cancelled?
If London/Essex then Eurostar is surely not unknown as a fastish way home. If further afield then I’m wondering why no mention of another airline having been considered. After all, this was to return to work on time in a job where she was still new.
Methinks the Daily Mail fussing may have something to do with the new job situation. Rather creates a bulletproof cloak from criticism if the tardy employee is DM-endorsed.
Manchester? Train not impossible then. And no flights Paris to Manchester or somewhere nearish?
This does rather show up how airlines possibly taking for granted people will go away meekly and be out of pocket for alternative flights or whatever, then taking their time or refusing to pay back.
I would be really interested in what Ryanair ends up paying her.
The last line says that Ryanair is in touch with her. So I think they’ll pay her full costs of extra accommodation and food, but not the airport parking.
£3k for 4 nights?
They’d better have eaten breakfast at that IC that Rob loves.Other carriers fly between Manchester (or Liverpool) and Paris, including easyJet and Air France. If this woman had thought to google her rights she would have discovered that she could most likely have booked to fly home much sooner and spent far less than the £3k she is now chasing Ryanair for.
There are trains between London and Manchester but fares are very high and services often disrupted. For somewhere like Paris it should have been simple to find an alternative flight within a day or so. I hope someone makes Ryanair stump up the cash for being so monumentally unhelpful, though.
The Daily Mail story doesn’t really ring true. There is so much publicity these days about flight rights, it seems highly unlikely that neither the person in question nor any of her family or her boss would be generally aware of the rights enough to look them up. If you aren’t in a strong financial position, who on earth would spend £3k on the basis of a conversation with someone in a Ryanair call centre and then expect the money back promptly. As @Aston100 says it is a ludicrous sum of money for someone as impecunious as she says she is to spend for four nights and probably wholly disproportionate to the cost of the weekend she had booked. They must not only have had the Grand breakfast but then gone on to Euro Disney by limo.
@meta – I’m not sure what makes you think Ryanair being in touch with her means she’ll get her money back! Ryanair is totally impervious to bad publicity and it’s hardly the first time these sort of stories about them have been aired. The quantum of her claim also fails the basic “necessary, appropriate and reasonable” test.Beyond that, she must have realised what she was risking and that it would be possible to travel the very short distance back to England by another means or to another airport without exposing herself to huge financial risk. If hotels in Paris were so expensive, she could have stayed outside the city, nearer Ryanair’s ‘Paris’ airport.
The Daily Mail story doesn’t really ring true. There is so much publicity these days about flight rights, it seems highly unlikely that neither the person in question nor any of her family or her boss would be generally aware of the rights enough to look them up. If you aren’t in a strong financial position, who on earth would spend £3k on the basis of a conversation with someone in a Ryanair call centre and then expect the money back promptly. As @Aston100 says it is a ludicrous sum of money for someone as impecunious as she says she is to spend for four nights and probably wholly disproportionate to the cost of the weekend she had booked. They must not only have had the Grand breakfast but then gone on to Euro Disney by limo.
@meta – I’m not sure what makes you think Ryanair being in touch with her means she’ll get her money back! Ryanair is totally impervious to bad publicity and it’s hardly the first time these sort of stories about them have been aired. The quantum of her claim also fails the basic “necessary, appropriate and reasonable” test.Also, didn’t she have insurance? Wouldn’t she think to call them?
Beyond that, she must have realised what she was risking and that it would be possible to travel the very short distance back to England by another means or to another airport without exposing herself to huge financial risk. If hotels in Paris were so expensive, she could have stayed outside the city, nearer Ryanair’s ‘Paris’ airport.
Quite delighted that I posted this so I could enjoy the responses 😈
There was recently someone on FT who had spent a couple of days waiting around Heathrow trying to get to Paris. Bizarre!
Quite a weird story, I wouldn’t be staying in a slum if I did get stuck on an airline’s dime but I certainly would keep it reasonable especially if I were dealing with Ryanair and £3k doesn’t sound reasonable!
Is Ryanair responsible for a French air controllers strike ?
In a similar situation several years ago the refused any compensation because the strike had been scheduled before we bookedDuty of care always applies so Ryanair is on the hook either for a reroute or reasonable expenses whilst waiting for a flight. I think we’re all questioning why 1) she didn’t reroute onto one of the many potential ways to get from Paris to NW England and b) if 3k for 4 nights constitutes reasonable!!
She was informed by the airliner that her 7:30pm flight to Manchester the next day had been cancelled….The next day Danielle and her kids were forced to check out of their hotel and she said they spent the next two hours sitting on the pavement outside desperately trying to figure out what to do next.
Why didn’t she figure it out the day before?!!
Danielle immediately screenshotted the text and sent it to her boss, knowing that she would not be able to work for most of that week
So, already decided there was no other way back!
They both tried to contact the RyanAir customer service desk only to find out that it was closed on Sundays.is that true?!
they are now having to be ‘very careful’ with their finances.
Pity they weren’t in Paris!
Duty of care always applies so Ryanair is on the hook either for a reroute or reasonable expenses whilst waiting for a flight. I think we’re all questioning why 1) she didn’t reroute onto one of the many potential ways to get from Paris to NW England and b) if 3k for 4 nights constitutes reasonable!!
The EC/UK261 test is slightly more than just ‘reasonable’, it is “necessary, appropriate and reasonable”. Personally, when I’m spending other people’s money (ie Ryanair’s) as was the case here, I would be more careful than spending my own money.
I’m afraid @JDB there is no such test written into legislation. It simply says reasonable in relation to waiting time.
If you read the article properly, it’s actually Ryanair who offered her a flight only four days later, so they are on the hook. They are also on the hook because they should have informed here of how much she could spend.
£750 per day in Paris does not seem unreasonable. It includes accommodation at last minute, 3 meals a day per person (and there were 3 of them!). It adds up very quickly. Although DM might have embellished the figure from say £2k to 3k for effect.
I’m afraid @JDB there is no such test written into legislation. It simply says reasonable in relation to waiting time.
If you read the article properly, it’s actually Ryanair who offered her a flight only four days later, so they are on the hook. They are also on the hook because they should have informed here of how much she could spend.
£750 per day in Paris does not seem unreasonable. It includes accommodation at last minute, 3 meals a day per person (and there were 3 of them!). It adds up very quickly. Although DM might have embellished the figure from say £2k to 3k for effect.
@meta – that three limb test – “necessary, appropriate and reasonable” is the CJEU test in McDonagh v Ryanair and applies to rerouting costs as well as right to care costs. It is a ten year old judgment but still very much applies today; I have seen it used in many cases. As more and more people elect to self reroute they need to recognise that if they fail either of the first two tests, the cost can never be reasonable, however low.The CAA has published this test as well.
Oh, and if their original flight back was for Mon evening, the kids were missing school ;o))
I think we know what happened here, there was absolutely an element of calculation here, and serves Ryanair right.
Especially as at current hotel prices, and Paris generally, my thoughts were same as @meta’s: £750 per day for a room for 3 people (harder to find in Paris) not even particularly nice just clean, and 3 meals a day for 3 people, at zero notice, in June, in Paris, is not actually unreasonable at market prices.
To please @Blair Waldorf Salad even more, actually I wouldn’t want to be this lady’s employer. Prurient minds could even think her first decision on receiving the cancellation was “well s*d them I’ll have 4 days off work and at Ryanair’s expense”.
This would quite concern me as an employer and a hint that having 2 children and being single is going to be used repeatedly for work failures or to obtain work privileges other employees might not so easily receive, in the future. Miaow.
But of course all we see is how the Daily Mail has presented it and I may be being grossly unfair to this poor stranded relationship manager.
I think we know what happened here, there was absolutely an element of calculation here, and serves Ryanair right.
Especially as at current hotel prices, and Paris generally, my thoughts were same as @meta’s: £750 per day for a room for 3 people (harder to find in Paris) not even particularly nice just clean, and 3 meals a day for 3 people, at zero notice, in June, in Paris, is not actually unreasonable at market prices.
To please @Blair Waldorf Salad even more, actually I wouldn’t want to be this lady’s employer. Prurient minds could even think her first decision on receiving the cancellation was “well s*d them I’ll have 4 days off work and at Ryanair’s expense”.
This would quite concern me as an employer and a hint that having 2 children and being single is going to be used repeatedly for work failures or to obtain work privileges other employees might not so easily receive, in the future. Miaow.
But of course all we see is how the Daily Mail has presented it and I may be being grossly unfair to this poor stranded relationship manager.
@LL, you have well and truly stepped up in commenting on this story in the way I hoped you might. 😆 So glad I am not alone in seeing something pre-meditated here.
Lol. My first thought was that this lady should have put more effort into getting home and less getting Insta-ready but felt I might be being uncharitable 😂
So that’s a Miaow from you, too, @Northernlass?
I wonder what @Froggee thinks, as a gentleman and very recently in Paris with two children.
It was always nonsense that she couldn’t get home sooner, and for well under the £3k she eventually spent. But it will serve Ryanair right if they have to now stump up her £3k, they must have been aware that they would be on the hook for duty of care when they told her she couldn’t travel home for another 4 days.
Sadly, although our outbound flights to GCM seem to get disrupted most years, our return has never been cancelled, even in 2019 as Hurricane Dorian was laying waste to the Caribbean!
You rang M’Lady?
I’m in two minds but I’m not overly inclined to be too judgy on this one. So my random thoughts:
– we are pretty much all seasoned travellers. Most are not. Do not underestimate the feeling of despair a typical person goes through when things go wrong and therefore the reliance placed on the entity that they have booked with in terms of rectifying any problem.
– this one time at band camp, when BA cancelled family Froggee’s flight at Edinburgh Airport, a plane load of people stood for two hours with minimal grumbling despite zero information. When told that we were going to be put on an overnight bus to Heathrow where BA would then attempt to subsequently fly us to Jersey and if this was not acceptable, we should go with the man in a suit for an immediate refund, pretty much the entire plane acquiesced.
– I think the fact that the lady checked out of the hotel and sat on the pavement for a couple of hours (assuming it is true) showed a certain feeling of helplessness. I’d imagine at some point the protective nature in her kicked in and she made a decision to find safe accommodation for her relatively young sons. She probably wasn’t thinking that clearly in terms of pricing.
– in terms of £750 a day in Paris at zero notice (including food) I’m sure she could have paid (much) less. But it is very different planning four days versus suddenly having four days forced on you. The biggest decision is whether the mum should be sharing a room with her boys or whether two rooms is reasonable. I’d suggest the determinant of that is what room arrangement they originally paid for.
– as we all know, frogs are world renowned philosophers and behavioural scientists. Two frog expressions spring to mind:
– Firstly “frog at bottom of well say sky only as big as rim of well”. The last minute flight cancellation very much put this lady at the bottom of a well and the only sky she could see was her rebooked flight four days on.
– and secondly we all know what happens if you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water (although please don’t try this at home folks) – the frog jumps straight out. But if you stick the same frog into a pot of room temperature water and slowly turn up the heat, then it will allow itself to be cooked alive. I think this is probably what happened. Having been thrown into a well with room temperature water by Ryanair, she then cooked herself by burning £750 a day.
– I do actually feel sorry for her. She clearly made a bunch of dumb decisions but she was in a rubbish position and it would have been very stressful for her. Did she perhaps think, “we’re stuck her and I’m not going to slum it seeing as Ryanair are paying”? Possibly.
– A few weeks ago, Mrs Froggee left me unsupervised with the boys for a week. Something about a work trip to Vietnam – I wasn’t really paying attention when she left. Single parenting two children is very hard work. This woman manages to single parent two boys, holds down a job and has enough of a financial buffer that she had a couple of grand spare which by all accounts most people in the UK do not. She clearly isn’t a muppet and does not deserve to be ridiculed.
– I think the instagram type filtered photos are a red herring. The popular press seem to lift these off people’s social media. I don’t blame her for posting the odd picture where she is trying to look nice. What is she meant to post – photos of her with bad hair looking bleary-eyed, still in her pyjamas because life is so tough?So my conclusion is screw Ryanair. They should pay up. I’m sure this woman wishes she’d done things differently now but at the time I can see how she wasn’t quite thinking straight. If Ryanair had met their EU261 obligations then this lady wouldn’t have dropped £3k in Paris.
Who behaved more poorly – Ryanair or the lady? Ryanair by a country mile.
So screw Ryanair.
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