I occasionally read the comments on Ryanair on airlinequality.com to see if I'm even more shocked than the last time or whether thay are improving. Just had a look and I'm not disappointed on the shock front - this one is from 5 days ago.

In addition to Paul Gibson's comments - Brussels to Prestwick New Year - the treatment by Ryanair at Charleroi airport and since has been a disgrace. The airport was in chaos with so many passengers having to wait for hours to reach the front of the cue only to be told we could have our money back (in seven days time) or we could join a waiting list to see if we could get on a flight the next day or the day after that, but no guarantees, or we could try to make our own way to Paris to catch a plane from there (but the staff weren't even able to tell us where in Paris the airport was or how to get there).

There was absolutely no offer of any help in anyway. We had a total of 25 euros in our pocket which was enough for the bus back to Brussels - lucky -as there is no cash machine at the airport. Once in Brussels we paid with plastic to get Eurostar to London then a train from Euston back to Scotland - arriving home at midnight £400 lighter. We were lucky in the sense that there were only 2 of us and we didn't have our kids with us and are fit enough and young enough to run around stations with luggage and also had a credit card. I would like to know how people with children or the elderly were expected to do the same. If we had had children with us we would now be in serious debt if we'd had to pay for them too. Surely Ryan air has a duty of care, especially to the vulnerable, to ensure the safety of the people it has contracted to transport - if not legally then morally. The really annoying thing too is that they went through the pretence of checking everyone in and had us all sitting at the gate when they knew fine well that the flight wouldn't be going as they had already cancelled the other flights that morning too. They didn't even offer to transport people to hotels, stations, other airports etc. It must be a very scary and stressful experience for some people and it must only be a matter of time before we see Ryanair in the dock for causing some poor soul, god forbid, to die of a heart attack brought on by the stress of being totally abandoned in a foreign country with no money and nobody to help them..........