Ryanair’s desperation to win back its customers with an “ultra-cheap” seat sale has backfired and left the embattled airline a laughing stock on social media.
The Irish airline’s decision to launch a £9.99 per seat “mega sale” sparked a mixture of incredulity, anger and Twitter jokes among customers. The advert promising “a great deal” on a million seats on 900 routes until the end of February was emailed to customers including many who had bought tickets on other Ryanair routes that had been axed in the same period.
Some suggested that buying the tickets would mean “putting a tenner down the drain.” Paul Reynolds tweeted an image of the advertisement and asked: “Will there be any planes attached to those seats by the way?”
Clive Darken tweeted: “Can I cancel before I buy???” And Brodie Agnew asked: ”How much extra do I have to pay for a plane and pilot?”
Faced with a Twitter storm of mockery, Ryanair’s social media team retained a sense of humour, responding: ”No worries, that’s been taken care of, so our aircraft and pilot are included in the price.”
Ryanair’s latest decision to cancel flights for another 400,000 passengers on 18,000 flights over winter also attracted outright from many customers. It was accused of “cancelling Christmas” by wrecking people’s travel plans for the mid-winter holiday period. Those passengers who were affected used the hashtag #boycottRyanair and vowed never to fly with the airline again.
Peter Bond wrote “#Ryanair what a complete and utter shambles of a company. Not fit for purpose. I’ll never use them #boycottRyanair.”
Victims of the cancellations described the mega sale as “salt in the wound” and “disgusting.” The avalanche of criticism came as the airline was given until 5pm on Friday to sort out compensation for hundreds of thousands of travellers hit by the cancellations.
Ryanair waited until less than an hour before a deadline set by Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) for the airline to tell all passengers affected by recent cancellations of their full rights and entitlements.The CAA – effectively the UK’s airline watchdog – has the power to take carriers to court but cannot stop them flying.
Ryanair’s last-minute capitulation to CAA’s demands resulted in the airline issuing a document explaining that grounded passengers were entitled to receive a refund or be given a new flight on the same day or the next day. When there is no Ryanair flight available the airline will buy seats with rivals including easyJet, Norwegian Air, Jet2, Vueling and Aer Lingus.
If that is impossible they will offer to pay for other flights, trains, buses or car hire and will “reimburse any reasonable out of pocket expenses” incurred as a result of the cancellation.
Within minutes of Ryanair backing down by belatedly informing its passengers of their rights CAA boss Andrew Haines said the airline had “capitulated”. Earlier in the week the airline had not been complying with European Union laws by failing to offer to re-route passengers on rival airlines.
During the airline’s first wave of recent cancellations Ryanair offered affected passengers a £40 voucher per cancelled flight as a way to “say sorry”. Ryanair says it has now taken on extra staff to process the expected increase in customer claims.
by Bob Graham
The post Travel: Ryanair is Laughing Stock on Twitter appeared first on Felix Magazine.
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