Alex Iszatt (Reporter)
WHEN Guy Horne tried to board the Ryanair flight from Malaga to Manchester – with his £36 bottle of Glenmorangie – staff told him to pay up or get off.
Buying the whisky in duty free, Ryanair told the student that he would have to pay a £50 surcharge to take the bottle on board.
He told the Metro newspaper: ‘I took the bottle out of its box and tried to fit it in my bag but she [the stewardess] still said no. I was begging and pleading with her to let me on the plane but she wouldn’t let me. I was stood there at the entrance to the plane and I was completely powerless. I was just in a state of disbelief. You just want some commonsense.”
Horne eventually caught an easyJet flight several hours later at a cost of almost £200.
In 2011 Spanish national airport authority AENA told all flights that passengers had the right to carry separate bags with shopping purchases at its airports.
AENA Director Commercial Services & Properties Mariano Sanz: “With this new law passengers are allowed to take an extra bag with purchases onto their flights. We have communicated strongly to Ryanair that they must obey the rules. When we told them, they said they would comply with Irish law rather than Spanish law; but we said that this was not acceptable, and we repeated that they must follow the rules in place at Spain’s airports.”
Ryanair claimed that Horne had two extra pieces of hand luggage as well as his carry-on bag, calling its 10kg allowance “generous”.
It added: “Ryanair will not delay its flights for passengers who fail to comply with its terms and conditions of travel.”
Joke
mind you give the man credit…he didnt bottle it!
Please can people try to pronounce it properly. It rhymes with “..orange”, not “. Meringue”. The stress is on the “Mor . . .”
Ryanair needs to comply with the Law if not they should be fined
If the bottle contained IRISH whisky would Ryanair mind?
As well as sacking one of their senior pilots for speaking out
about safety on T.V., Ryanair have now victimised a student and refused to allow him on a flight! Not only that, they refuse to acknowledge Spanish law at a Spanish Airport. What arrogance!
What an idiot. The bottle cost him an extra two hundred pounds to get it back home. How much was the bottle worth? How did he get it back through control as it was duty free? Lots missing from this report.
The bottle of whisky he refused to give up cost £36, the alternative flight cost him an extra £200? Shouldn’t the piece be about his stupidity rather than about Ryanair on whom, despite knowing everything about them, we still continue to fly?
DO NOT COMPLAIN JUST DO NOT FLY RYANAIR BECAUSE IF YOU DO YOU CAN EXPECT THESE KIND OF CODES OF PRACTISE AND A WHOLE LOT MORE .You get what you pay for and with ryanair you pay for every little bit you get .Frankly I have no sympathy what so ever you all know what con merchants ryanair are and if you choose to fly with them then you are choosing to get ripped off . HE SHOULD HAVE DROPPED THE BOTTLE AND BROKE IT ACCIDENTS HAPPEN OR LEFT IT BEHIND IT WOULD HAVE BEEN CHEAPER THAN PAYING 50 POUNDS SURCHARGE . or leaving the flight and taking another one at the cost of 200 pounds.
I love Ryanair. Yes – you get what you pay for. Last week, for around £40, I got a flight from UK to Spain. Just driving from Valencia to Barcelona would cost twice that much, with fuel and tolls.
It’s simple. Follow their rules and you can’t go wrong. Take ONE bag on board and a jacket with LOTS of zip up pockets.
Not enough people are passing on the ‘avoid Ryanair’ message, but its getting there. They are a publicly tolerated disgrace at every level of their so-called ‘service’, I agree and support those in the travel business who are advising their clients to avoid them if possible. Ryanair need cutting down to size. Any potential buyers should thing deeply about its muddy reputation with the public. Ryanair only offer arrogance,deceptive methods and a zero customer experience. They appear to hand out the same treatment to aircrew who dare to put safety and the customer before excessive profits. Shame on them. Most of their ‘customers’, like me, only fly them because there’s often no alternative, other that that, we hate them.
Love ’em or loathe ’em, we can’t do without ’em and well they know it. As O’Leary never tires of asserting, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. In fact, on many occasions they court controversy, an example being the notion of charging a euro for a pee. The truth is, the more we slag them off, the more they thrive on it.
He was obviously a student of economics and would have won a place in the cabinet of the last government.
Absolutely disgusting. It’s a disgrace what these airlines get away with and it should be stopped.
A couple of years ago I was returning on a easy jet from Gibraltar to Gatwick when at Gibraltar they took my new bottle of Jean Paul Gaultier Classic, 100ml bottle. I had only used it on holiday so pretty much a full bottle, the perfume cost me £60 and the airline confiscated it because I simply didn’t have a zip lock bag and Gibraltar airport don’t provide these like Gatwick do. A disgrace.
To PM,
Is there an audio version of the Olive Press that I’ve somehow overlooked?
“Please can people try to pronounce it properly. It rhymes with “..orange”, not “. Meringue”. The stress is on the “Mor . . .”
I’m confused to say the least.
I have always understood that students didn’t have money to live,let alone waste on points of principle and bottles of booze.
Angela Bell. That would be airport security that took it off you, not the airline. Does anyone fly these days not knowing they need to put their liquids in a plastic bag? Sorry, no sympathy on this one. The rule may be excessive, but you knew what it was. Why should the airport provide the bag? Don’t you pack before you leave home?
Rob
AUGUST 17TH, 2013 12:20 PM
Ryanair needs to comply with the Law if not they should be fined…..
Spanish law applies in the airport. What AENA forgets is that onboard any craft, air or maritime, it is the law of the country of registration that applies. It is classed as sovereign soil.
Steve: Manchester airport makes a pretty penny from their bag-dispensing machine. (a quid for two VERY small bags). I was actually sent to the back of the queue, to buy from the machine, for having the temerity to bring my own comparable bag. (It had a supermarket logo on) So Gib. airport seems to be missing a trick, unless of course, Gaultier perfume is well-favoured there.
Stupid Spanish airports … putting up signs which the airline doesn’t agree with, and as usual it’s the poor passengers who suffer. The airports are encouraging people to buy additional bags of duty-free because they are greedy for the money, but that’s ridiculous when they know what will happen when those people arrive at the departure gate. Typical Spanish – spend your money in good faith and then it’s your tough luck when you have to put those purchases in the bin!! Greedy idiots.
I know this will be an unpopular comment but I am a supporter of Ryanair. OK sometimes their airport staff could be friendlier, but most aren’t employed by Ryanair, they are a contracted company. I have only had good experiences when I have had to contact their customer service department, including them giving me a full refund when I was unable to travel for health reasons despite not having travel insurance. They didn’t have to do that. As for the signs at Malaga airport stating you can take on duty free in adition to your hand baggage, that is the AENA’s fault. There is little enough space for normal hand baggage as it is. Imagine what it would be like if we all took on an extra duty free bag! Chaos, and not yhe airlines fault. Any airline, not just Ryanair.
June, this year, Gib. airport. Bought two one-litre bottles of fino allowed on board, bottles stashed under seat in front. Not even a raised eyebrow. Mind you, we did fly with Monarch.
Having said that, same scenario last year at Alicante, flew Ryanair, nothing said about bag with bottles being stuck under seat in front. Perhaps the trick is to buy the “official” duty-free bag to carry your goodies in.
TWO YEARS AGO I was returning to the UK with my granddaughters on Ryanair to Birmingham
While waiting to board the plane I took off my coat because I was getting hot . I put my coat in my bag which was well within the size stipulated by Ryanair. When it was our turn to board I was asked to check my bag in the cage to measure if it was the correct size .It went in ok but the strap caught on the metal when trying to retrieve it. The staff immediately said I had to pay 50€ to have the bag put in the hold .I refused and said would wear my coat. This was refused and they insisted I pay the fee . The lady in front of me was carrying her coat so she said why couldn’t I carry my coat like she was but the answer was still no.My granddaughters were now getting very distressed so I said Ok,I would leave the coat, it was taken from me and put under the desk ,i asked for it to be left in left luggage and I would collect it on my return. I returned to Malaga the next day and tried retrieve my coat from lost property but it wasn’t there!! I have written to Ryanair many times, had one automated reply, but still no coat. I agree we should boycott Ryanair but they have now monopolised the market and only they and Monarch, who are very expensive, have flights to Birmingham so I have very little choice, Pay up or shut up