EU261 claim from Ryanair
 

Oh no... another 261 thread! But, actually, this is my first time. I'm the awkward kind of person who likes to chase things up to a reasonable conclusion, so we'll see how this goes, I suppose!

Very simple really, my recent Ryanair flight Stansted to Vienna was delayed by 3 hours and 50 minutes ('officially' according to gate departures & arrivals). It was very windy and hats off to the pilot and co-pilot who probably needed a change of underwear with all that buffetting against 'Storm Darragh'. I would have let it go as I was in no particular hurry, it just meant I had 3 hours to squander at Vienna airport rather than 7. But Ryanair sent an e-mail reminding me to claim with EU261. Which was a surprise. And I thought "OK". This was an automatically generated e-mail which was sent exactly after the 2-hours limit had been reached. The plane had returned to the terminal for a mechanic to come and fix an instrument that had 'failed' according to the announcement given by pilot/co-pilot. So the delay gets pinned down to a 'technical issue' and not the weather.

What gets one miffed is that Ryanair's website is obviously deliberately designed to lead people down the garden path with a form for 261 but leading to claiming for 'expenses' (such as for transport, hotels, etc.) and nothing about EU261 compo. A lump sum of 250 Euros for a flight over 3 hours late and less than 1,500 kilometres (STN-VIE is 1,244). Finally I thought I'd try the chat function and got through straight away to a chap who said all I could do is use that form. Which is the Catch 22 situation. So I thought I'd see if there are any e-mail addresses for Ryanair and got a couple for the 'two at the top' and sent an e-mail to the boss. I'll give a week or three (as it's Christmas) and if no reply there's this ADR organisation (who they? no idea!)

https://www.aviationadr.org.uk/contact-aviationadr/

And if no joy with either of those I guess it'll be straight to the UK Small Claims Court.


As an anecdote, my brother once took British Airways to court when they took the mickey out of him by saying his flight to central Europe was cancelled because of the weather; he then asked them to show him the weather report on which the decision to cancel the flight was based, because he had noticed many other flights departing in that general direction for close-by destinations. They refused, so he took them to court and they lost, a few thousand quid out of those liars.

Well, I've never claimed before, only had a hotel one night out of Finnair with one of their flights being late in to Helsinki, and a night pack from SAS when my luggage didn't get put on my plane at Frankfurt (to London City). Anyway, I have respect for airline pilots, it's actually quite hard work; they too have the stress of waking up on time and getting to their place of work, and actually doing the job. I still find it incredible that you're doing 800km/h (I've seen 1,174 on the clock) at 13 or 14 kilometres up there where it can be minus 78 Centigrade, and there are no ripples on the surface of your cup of coffee.

You're not eligible for compensation if the delay is due to extraordinary circumstances outside of the airline's control. Storm Darragh is as close as you'll ever get to extraordinary circumstances outside of the airline's control.

This doesn't apply to reimbursement, e.g. if you had to pay for a hotel or a taxi or food in the airport because of the delay.

I agree, if the delay was caused by weather (you mention very windy, so most likely your travel date had one of the recent storms) Ryanair is exempted from paying comp. for delay; the UK courts will not side with you on this one. So most likely you are wasting your time for nothing here.

A fault with an instrument in the pilot's hidey-hole isn't an "extraordinary circumstance due to weather".

Anyway, update: no reply to my e-mail to Eddie Wilson, CEO of Ryanair (as expected), so letter in black & white posted today (2nd Jan) to three directors of Ryanair UK Ltd saying I'll give them 6 weeks to pop €250 into my bank account (as entitled according to EU261 Regulation) and if I hadn't heard from them by then I'd start a Small Claims Court process.

I did say I'd be happy to accept vouchers/credit for Ryanair flights as I certainly intend to travel with them in future. There's no point in being unreasonable and inflexible.

I note that you have edited your post today to refer to a technical issue. Your initial post referred to the weather and did not refer to a technical issue.