Ryanair responds to a hurried and mistaken booking from a grieving family

A reader who inadvertently booked two tickets in his own name on a Ryanair flight he and his family needed to take following the death of a loved one contacted us to express his dismay at how he was treated both in the airport and when he got home.
In May John’s mother-in-law from Belgium was diagnosed with cancer and passed away just weeks later. He and his wife and child travelled over for the funeral and “booked one way at the time because we didn’t know how long we would be there”.
Once the funeral arrangements were set, he was “anxious to book the return flights as the fares were going up each day”. He spotted three tickets left for a Brussels-Dublin flight on the Ryanair website and “hurriedly booked” them, or so he thought.
“Without realising it, I had booked two tickets in my name instead of one for me and one for my wife,” he writes.
“On the day of the flight, I went on the Ryanair site to check in and download the boarding cards. I was a little confused when my name seemed to come up again for the second booking but I entered my details again thinking it was still relating to the first booking. When no booking came up for my wife, it finally dawned on me that there were two bookings in my name, so I now had two boarding cards in my name and none for my wife.”
On their way to the airport his daughter contacted Ryanair to see if the issue could be resolved.
“She [the Ryanair agent] proved to be unhelpful and advised that we should take it up with the Ryanair agent at the airport. We got to the airport and went to the Ryanair agent beside the check-in desks. The agent advised that there was nothing she could do, it was too late to amend the booking as the boarding card had been issued and the only option was to buy a new ticket in my wife’s name,” John says.
“The agent added insult to injury by charging us for her carry-on bags as well as an additional €50 because it was not an online booking,” he continues. The total cost came to €323.
“My wife was distraught. She was standing at the desk with her mother’s urn in her arms pleading for some consideration to be shown given the circumstances. In the end, we had no choice but to pay, otherwise my wife would have been left behind. It was all about the money and there was no humanity shown to her at all.”
The family subsequently wrote to Ryanair explaining what had happened and asking if it could refund them for the ticket purchased at the airport or at the very least issue a voucher. Ryanair replied to say that its policy is not to issue refunds.
“I totally understand that I made the mistake, not once but twice, so from Ryanair’s perspective that’s the end of the matter. However, I am astonished that their system lets a passenger enter their details – name, date of birth, passport number and expiry date – twice and get issued with two boarding cards. It seems amazing that the system wouldn’t pick that up. If it had, I would have been able to amend the second booking from my name to my wife’s name and we would have been saved all the upset and considerable cost.”
Now, in our experience, Ryanair is very decent when dealing with people in difficult circumstances and we have heard many stories of it offering refunds to people who have suffered bereavements. We shared our reader’s story with Ryanair.
In response a spokeswoman confirmed the basic details of our reader’s story – that he had booked two seats in the same name and checked in for the flight with both boarding passes being issued in the same name.
The spokeswoman explained that a “third person” – his daughter – contacted Ryanair “but as she was not the named passenger” and was unable to provide key details of the booking and left the customer service agent chat without a resolution, there was nothing more Ryanair could have done at that point.
The statement says it was not true to say the agent was unhelpful merely that there was “nothing our agent could do when the person making the call was not the named passenger and could not pass our security questions and then left the chat”.
The statement says there was no name change facility available when the family got to the airport because it was less than two hours prior to the scheduled departure time.
The spokeswoman concludes by saying, “There is no entitlement to a refund in this case. However, given the circumstances, as a goodwill gesture we have authorised a refund of the unused passenger fare together with the airport booking fee, and the refund will amount to €143.25.”