I was looking for a separate thread for EU261 questions not relating to any of the big carriers with frequent flyer programmes without luck, but please feel free to move this query if this is not the right place.

I booked a flight for my parents from London to Billund on Ryanair, which is a route that typically sees 1-3 Ryanair flights and 1 BA flight a day (and 1-2 Sun-Air on weekdays). The flight was due to depart 19.45 on a Sunday, which allowed my parents to spend the weekend in London before heading home on Sunday evening - the flight to London is booked on Sun-Air separately.

Approx. 1 month before the flight, Ryanair cancelled the flight "due to commercial reasons" (i.e. not enough sales). Ryanair offered re-routing on a flight leaving at 12.25 (i.e. almost 7.5 hours earlier) or two days later (in which case they would not confirm that they would cover hotel costs). I asked for them to be re-routed on KLM from LCY to BLL via AMS leaving LCY at 17.50 but Ryanair said that as a Ryanair flight was available within 48 hours of the original flight, they would not rebook on other carriers. Consequently, I had to book the KLM flights and are now seeking reimbursement of the additional costs from Ryanair as the 12.25 flight would have made them miss the whole Sunday in London.

Ryanair have obviously rejected my claim and said that they do not cover the difference in cost to the new flights (approx. GBP 150 extra) as they offered an alternative on their own metal. My argument is that they did not offer a suitable alternative as their alternative was to leave 7 hours and 20 minutes earlier og 2 days later. The CAA guidelines seems to state that whether a re-routing offer is suitable depends on the time of day of the original and of the new flight etc., but in other places it states that re-routing on other carriers must be offered if the airline is unable to provide a new flight on the same day. Ryanair offered to put them on the midday flight, but this should surely not be a suitable alternative when it leaves so much earlier than their original flight.

Am I entitled to reimbursement of the additional costs of the KLM flights?

If your parents are offered same date flight with FR to BLL there is no right to buy a ticket on your own and seek reimbursement of the expenses. Despite inconvenient to your parents, having to travel 7 hours earlier is normally considered within suitable/comparable conditions and any claim for reimbursement is likely to fail in court.

Your parents have the option to ask for a full refund of the ticket and book on their own, if the alternative same day flight doesn't work for your parents. Finally, I'm sure FR would have rebooked to the earliest flight Monday morning, if it was impossible for your parents to depart London Sunday afternoon.

They were only offered the flight leaving at 12.25 and alternatively a flight on the Tuesday. Monday was fully booked, so that was not an option. It is a rather big inconvenience to have to travel on a Sunday morning instead of afternoon for a weekend trip as that would essentially change their trip from 2 full days to a little over 1 day. I'd agree it to be more fair on a long TATL flight, but for a short 1 hour flight I would disagree. The CAA does not seem entirely clear on this (as they say that the time of day is also relevant in assessing whether alternative carriers should be offered), so I guess we will try our luck with ADR.

The 12.25 was significantly cheaper when we booked their 19.45 flight approx. 2 months ahead, so it seems a bit odd that FR can just sell passengers expensive tickets on the 19.45 and then cancel the flight a few weeks later offering only the significantly cheaper option (which is obviously a lot more expensive this close to departure and with it being the only FR departure of the day).

Noted. By all means try ADR but I'm not convinced that the considerations about weekend trip/length of stay are valid and can be taken into consideration. If your parents had stayed a week in London it would probably mean less if they had to depart 7 hours earlier, but is that a risk of the airline that your parents booked a short trip and it was reduced significantly by the 7 hours? Anyway good luck!

If it had me I would have considered asking for a rebooking of the cancelled flight to later/high season to say Spain (where the fares are much more expensive) and bough the new ticket on the 12:25 FR flight on my own (but then you obviously can't claim reimbursement of the KLM ticket). FR has a quite generous rebooking policy for cancelled flights.

Just to close this thread: I ended up going through ADR and Ryanair decided not to defend the claim and offered to settle and pay the difference between the Ryanair flight and the KLM flights. Took approx. 4 weeks from submitting the claim to ADR.