Sir, - Anyone who has lived in Ireland long enough to remember the high cost of air travel to and from this country in the past must feel a certain gratitude to Ryanair for bringing in lower fares, and now for having introduced a much broader choice of destinations. These initiatives have proved very successful, and we read (The Irish Times, August 11th) that the company has made record first-quarter profits this year. However, it is hard not to feel that these profits are being achieved by an increasingly ruthless disregard for passengers' peace of mind. When I and other travellers checked in at Stansted on Monday August 9th for Flight 225 to Dublin, which was scheduled to leave at 2.35, we were told that it had been cancelled and that we had been put on Flight 227 which would leave an hour later. We boarded this flight in due course and waited for a further hour on the tarmac without being offered any explanation for the delay. In fact it was caused by the need to take on extra fuel and, consequently, to remove all passenger baggage from the plane.
When we arrived in Dublin we were told that our baggage had not arrived but would be brought over in instalments from Stansted as soon as possible. In my case, as I live in Dublin, this was no great inconvenience (my baggage arrived the following afternoon), but much anxiety must have been felt by the many foreign visitors on the plane, some of whom did not yet have an address to which their baggage could be delivered.
Ryanair may have saved itself the cost of an extra flight, but it also forfeited an enormous amount of passenger good will and gave many visitors a most stressful introduction to Ireland. - Yours, etc.,
A.M. Rowan, Leeson Park, Dublin 6.