‘Ryanair refused to allow us to board our flight out of London and charged us £490’ | UK | News | EUROtoday

A household from Northern Ireland has alleged that they had been denied boarding on a Ryanair flight from London after being wrongly instructed they wanted a visa to enter Ireland from the UK. Christina Finn and her husband Cameron had flown to London from Belfast for a CBeebies occasion with their five-month-old son, and had been getting back from Stansted to Dublin after they had been turned away by the price range airline.

Speaking to Belfast Live, Christina mentioned their issues started after they could not examine in on-line for his or her flight. “We had flown to London on Friday morning from Belfast for a meeting with the BBC, and we were to fly home from London to Dublin and then get the bus up to Belfast as that was the cheapest option, and it is something we would do all the time,”she mentioned. she defined.

Travelling with their five-month-old child, who is kind of unwell and wishes treatment twice a day, it was essential for them to get house early. “When we went to check in on the app, it wouldn’t let me click through to our booking at all and I thought the issue was with my phone so when we got to the airport, we had to check in at the desk where we then had to pay a fine for not checking in online.”

After paying the high-quality, Christina mentioned the Ryanair workers requested to see their passports.

She knowledgeable them that that they had travelled to London with easyJet utilizing their driving licences however that in addition they had their passports, which had just lately expired, reviews Belfast Live.

A pregnant British lady was left in utter dismay when she was denied boarding on her flight again house on account of passport confusion on the airport. Recounting the irritating ordeal, she mentioned, “My husband has an Irish passport and I have a British one which have both recently expired. With the baby due, we were waiting until he was born to renew them so that we could just do it at the same time. We informed the staff that we had flown over on our driving licences so he took them away and came back with a man who told us that because my husband has an expired Irish passport, he would be allowed on the flight to Dublin but as my passport was a British one they couldn’t let me on the plane.”

The state of affairs turned extra perplexing when the workers insisted on visa necessities. She continued, “The staff informed me that as a UK citizen I would need a visa to travel to Ireland as it is in the EU and I tried to explain to them that that wouldn’t apply due to the Common Travel Area. I told him that we lived in Northern Ireland and he then questioned how I had a British passport and couldn’t seem to understand that it was a pretty common thing for people to fly to Dublin then travel on to Belfast. He also said that we would need to have evidence that we had booked onward travel from Dublin to Belfast.”

The state of affairs escalated when the airline workers claimed there can be penalties in the event that they proceeded. “As I questioned it, he said that he was speaking to someone on the phone who told him that if they let us on the plane and if we arrived in Dublin we would be stopped at passport control and the airline would be fined between £500 and £1000 for allowing me on the plane without a valid passport.”

In the tip, the couple was introduced with a pricey resolution. Christina mentioned that the workers member knowledgeable them that the one method round their subject can be for them to e-book a brand new flight on to Belfast which might price them £490.

Christina’s vacation woes started when she and her household had been omitted of pocket by Ryanair’s stringent check-in insurance policies.

Narrating the chaotic flip of occasions, she recounted: “We had to borrow the money from my mum for the flights and while I was on the phone to her she looked up the Government website which stated that you did not need a passport or visa to travel between the UK and Ireland. She sent me a screenshot of this which I showed to the man and he said he would look into it then he walked away.”

Feeling confused and looking for readability, Christina took proactive steps: “I decided to ring the British embassy in Dublin who directed me to call the Irish embassy in London and the woman on the phone was horrified. She said that there was no requirement for people to have a passport for travelling between the UK and Ireland and that there was also no need for a visa.”

However, the state of affairs wasn’t as simple as worldwide rules counsel: “However, she explained that Ryanair could have its own policy requiring travellers to have a passport.”

These hurdles left Christina feeling marginalised: she mentioned that the entire expertise made her really feel like a “second-class citizen”.

Ryanair defended their actions in an announcement, the place a spokesperson clarified: “In accordance with Ryanair’s TandC’s, which these passengers agreed to at the time of booking, these passengers failed to check-in online before arriving at London Stansted Airport (5 June). Therefore, these passengers were correctly asked to pay the required airport check-in fee (£55 per passenger), however refused to do so, and became aggressive towards the agents at the check in desk at London Stansted Airport.”

The spokesperson reiterated the significance of following the airline’s procedures: “All passengers travelling with Ryanair agree to check-in online before arriving at their departure airport and all passengers are sent an email reminding them to do so 24hrs before departure.

“These passengers had been subsequently appropriately denied boarding to this flight from London Stansted to Dublin (5 June) as these passengers’ passports didn’t meet the necessities for journey as each passports had expired in 2024.

“It is each passenger’s responsibility to ensure that their passport is valid for travel in line with the relevant State requirements at the time of travel. These requirements are clearly set out on Ryanair.com, and passengers are reminded with pop-up messages during booking. Passengers travelling between Ireland and the UK are required to carry a valid passport for travel. Therefore, as these passengers did not present a valid passport for this flight from London Stansted to Dublin Airport, they were correctly denied boarding.”