Ryanair is an absolute shambles

11 May 2010

Along with hundreds of other travellers I have witnessed one of the worst cases of the most appalling breakdown in communication during my lifetime. I was returning from Malaga airport to East Midlands and when we got to the airport there was already a lengthy queue for the Edinburgh flight and there were already murmurings that there maybe a problem because an earlier flight to Stansted had been cancelled and Easyjet was already showing that a much later flight to Gatwick had already been cancelled.

Notwithstanding all this, flights to Bristol, Liverpool, Leeds Bradford, East Midlands, Edinburgh, Manchester and a host of other destinations all with Ryanair were all shown with no delay or cancellation. People were telephoning home to check the Ryanair site and no problems were being shown. I approached the Ryanair desk at 1800 to ask if the flight from East Midlands had set off and he said he had heard nothing to the contrary.

A few people had been checked through for the Edinburgh flight leaving at about 1935 from memory albeit well after the check in desk should have opened and we all assumed everything was OK and then without warning the gate closed with no explanation given.

Our flight was due to leave at 2020 and by now it was 1900 so the desk should have been opened at 1820. The news coming back from the Ryanair desk was still non committal. My wife checked with her friend who went onto the Ryanair site back home which was still not reporting any problems and indeed their flight checker was showing it on schedule.

Someone in the queue then told me that their taxi driver had rung over an hour ago to say that the flight had never left East Midlands. At about 2045 a person from the airport told the people gathered at the Edinburgh gate that no Ryanair flights were leaving tonight. This was news to the Ryanair staff at the time.

There all seemed very confusing since a Monarch flight to Manchester was checking in with no problems yet the Ryanair flight to the same destination had been cancelled. By the way the Ryanair site was still not showing a problem.

It seems a poor state of affairs when a taxi driver is more in the know than Ryanair.