Originally Posted by melinmelin

I am living in Spain on a resident visa good until 2011, with my husband and 2 kids who hold a UK passsports and Spanish resident visas. I just went thru the rigamarole, harrassment and almost missing my flight as described by others on this forum, since I was fed up with paying the check-in fees for no apparent reason and tried to do online check-in and boarding, using my Spanish resident identification. I am not even supposed to NEED a passport to travel within Europe!!
But my question is why Ryanair came up with this policy (no other airline has it), i.e., based on what regulation, and is it legal? It seems discriminatory and maybe it is in fact illegal, since they do in the end admit that they are supposed to refund the money. I am going to ask the EU commission in Brussels and I have filed a complaint with my local Spanish government, but any other ideas on how to find out if it's legal?
I am done with flying on Ryanair for the foreseeable future. It has been a hassle, demeaning in many ways and seems to provoke anger in me just by their doing business as usual! It's definitely not worth any money saved, since every time I have flown on them (probably have been on about 10 flights in 2 years) there is some surprise hassle, humiliation or extra payment and aggro involved. Thanks for any help on getting to the bottom of this policy. I know I will not get any info out of Ryanair itself, as I have tried and failed at that.