Consumer organisation Deco and Portugal's National Civil Aviation Authority both have received complaints from passengers affected by the cancellation of Ryanair flights.
Many Portuguese nationals are being disadvantaged by the Irish carrier, as meals, hotel stays and associated costs such as phone calls are not being met.
Ryanair announced the cancellation of 50 flights a day to the end of October in a staff holidays blunder that left the airline with insufficient pilots to operate a full service. This will cost the carrier an estimated €20 million in reimbursements and compensation, but not if it can avoid paying up as the airline is notoriously tricky whenever money is due to flow out, rather than in.
Among the "several dozen complaints" from Portuguese customers stranded abroad are non-payment of legally due reimbursement for meals and hotels, the subject of compensation due under EU legislation has not yet been raised but it is expected that the carrier will make this as difficult as possible to access.
"Ryanair's attitude towards its customers has been illegal and immoral," said Deco’s lawyer Paulo Fonseca, who once again appealed to passengers to send in their complaints to Deco so that it could help solve the problem.
Deco has received "requests for help from Portuguese retained abroad, without return flights for several days, for whom Ryanair is not paying the hotel costs."
Another knock-on effect of the O’Leary “fuck up” as he now famously has called the situation, is a complaint filed with Deco from a group of students, developing links between Kosovo and Portugal via the Erasmus university education programme, whose visas will expire due to the cancellation of their flight and they will not be able to attend their courses.
The deep-rooted cynicism inherent in Ryanair’s culture now may be impossible to erase, a further example being the charging of luggage reservation fees to these customers rebooking their flight. This is illegal, according to Deco’s lawyer, but Ryanair’s deception and gouging continues even when the business is under pressure.
Ryanair has offered its pilots an additional payment if they agreed to fly on their days off (€ 12,000 to captains and € 6,000 to co-pilots,) but the proposal was rejected, mainly due to comments made by O’Leary whose standard negotiation tactic is to belittle the opposition - in this at least he succeeded by suggesting the job of a pilot is easy once you know how and that they only have to work 18 hours a week.
The pilots said that they reject the Ryanair offer as ‘inadequate’ and that all goodwill, if there was any, has long since departed.
