It is unsurprising perhaps that we see the number of travel-themed stories increase in the summer time, although these three stories about Ryanair have little or nothing to do with the sun-seeking season.
Josephine, a “senior citizen, widowed, living alone [and] striving to be as independent as possible”, got in touch after paying on the double – or even treble – for one bag she wanted to check in on a flight to Italy.
She is a member of a walking club and booked a flight for a club holiday with Ryanair on September 29th, 2025, adding a 20kg check-in suitcase and paying a total of €299.40 for return flights and suitcase.
“The outward flight time was slightly changed and when I went to check in online on May 19th, 2026, the booked luggage popped up on the app again and I foolishly thought the luggage had been unbooked because of the flight time change,” she writes.
READ MORE
“I booked my 20kg suitcase again,” she continues. “Feeling a bit stressed I was a bit slow confirming it in my banking app and was not sure this was completed so ended up paying two amounts of €102.”
Josephine contacted her bank immediately “but they could not cancel one of the transactions [and] advised me to contact Ryanair. I did several times, explained my error to a bot and online to an agent and told them I would only have one suitcase. I got no help and decided to wait until my return home.”
She flew home early last month and since then has “raised eight support cases/queries with Ryanair, dealt with bots and online agents and have met the cold hard corporate face of the company”.
She says she has “uploaded bank statements showing three payments, they say this is not proof. I accept I made a mistake, a company with any heart would refund me or indeed pick up on my error. I feel upset and dispirited and my confidence has taken a beating.”
Evelyn’s story
We also heard from Evelyn.
“I have the Ryanair app on my phone with which I booked a recent flight to Stansted for my husband and I. While working from home on Thursday I received a notification from Ryanair to check in for my flight on Friday, June 12th.”
Evelyn says she duly “followed the prompts and downloaded boarding cards”.
“However when I arrived at Dublin Airport on Friday morning we discovered that the boarding cards were for my return journey from Stansted. I had not been prompted to check-in for departure from Dublin,” she writes.
“I was forced to pay €110 for paper boarding cards as apparently the check-in for the flight had closed and I could not attempt to use the app to check in for my outbound journey while standing in the airport.”
She says she is annoyed because she reckons the Ryanair app was enabled to prompt her to check in for her return journey but not prompt her to check in from Dublin. “I am seeking my €110 back or a form of credit to compensate me for relying on the Ryanair app but not being helped by it,” she says.
Martina’s story
And then there was Martina’s story.
“My two sisters and I booked flights with Ryanair to travel from Ireland West Airport Knock to London Luton on December 4th, 2026 on the 8.30am flight returning on Sunday December 6th. We booked the flights on February 3rd and planned to spend two days shopping in London,” she begins.
On April 29th they all received emails telling them that their flight time had changed from 8.30am to 4pm on December 4th.
“We were very disappointed with this, as it meant we either lost one of our shopping days or had to go the day before and incur an additional night’s accommodation,” she writes.
She goes on to say that a few days after she received the email telling her that that flight time had changed she checked the Ryanair website and saw that the flight that she and her sisters had originally booked was still available for booking.
“I wrote to Ryanair by registered letter asking them to clarify the situation and stating that as the flight is still scheduled to fly, we would prefer to stick with this flight,” she writes.
“A few days later I received an email stating that we were not entitled to any compensation as they had notified us of the change well in advance. In my letter, I had not asked for compensation. I had asked them if our original flight was still scheduled to fly as they were still selling it on the website. I replied to their email stating this. Eventually I got a reply telling me to phone the helpline.”
Martina writes that she “tried phoning the help line, but no matter what I said to the automated system, it referred me back to the website. I then went on the online chat and once again was just advised to accept the suggested schedule change.”
Just before sending us the email she checked the Ryanair website and the 8.30am flight on the Friday morning was still available to book. “It is so frustrating as we do not want to accept the changes if the flight we have booked is still going to fly.”
Ryanair’s response
When we highlighted these stories to the airline we were shown several sides of the airline.
In response to our first query, a spokeswoman for the airline confirmed that Josephine had indeed paid on multiple occasions for the same 20kg checked-in bag.
The spokeswoman said that “since each of these were separate bookings, paid for separately using separate forms of payment, they are valid bookings for additional bags and so there is no basis for refund. However, as a goodwill gesture, we will refund the second bag payment made on May 19th and this payment of €102 will be returned to the form of payment she used to make this second booking.”
[ Ryanair drops policy of charging adults to sit with their children on flightsOpens in new window ]
There was no such goodwill accommodation to be made when it came to our second reader, Evelyn.
The spokeswoman said that “like most passengers [she] has travelled with Ryanair before and [is] well aware that she has to check-in for her flight before arriving at the departure airport”.
The spokeswoman said Evelyn had been sent “two reminder emails reminding her to check in for both her outbound and her return flights”.
She said our reader had “flown previously on Ryanair services and is well aware that she has already agreed to check in online before arriving at the departure airport. Having failed to do so, she was properly charged the airport check-in fee at Dublin Airport on June 12th. Her claim that the Ryanair app is ‘clearly unreliable’ is false and unfounded. She was sent email reminders to check in and she failed to do so. This was nothing to do with the Ryanair app as she wrongly claims.”
When it came to Martina’s story, the Ryanair spokeswoman came close to admitting it was at fault or at least had made some class of error during the process.
The response noted that the original booking had been made last February “long before the Winter 2026 schedule had been finalised”.
The spokeswoman said that in April “a second flight was added to the schedule from Knock to Luton but, unusually, it was assigned the same flight number as the 8.30am departure. This was an error by our flight scheduling team and not an error in our system.”
We’re not entirely sure what difference that makes to our reader, to be honest; it was an error made by Ryanair that affected her. Whether it was made by the flight scheduling team or was an error in the Ryanair system is entirely irrelevant to Martina, we would have thought.
The spokeswoman went on to say that Martina and her sisters “were schedule changed to the later sector, but since the original flight was never cancelled (it continues to operate but under the same flight number), all passengers received a comms email on June 10th explaining the time change and giving them the option to accept the flight change, change the flight for free, or apply for a full refund. Since the original 8.30am flight is still operating, [Martina] and her party remain booked on that flight, and she need take no further action in this case.”
We don’t know about you but that seems pretty confusing to us. It also seemed pretty confusing to Martina when we sent Ryanair’s response to her. And it was confusing to someone else booked on the same early morning flight and then apparently moved to the later one who also contacted us.
We also think it is worthwhile to include what else the Ryanair spokeswoman had to say to us.
“As you will see from these four cases [also including John’s story about the name change issue highlighted here] the Ryanair booking system is simple to use, it is straightforward, it does not make name changes or ‘miscommunications’ with passengers. If a passenger booked an additional bag, or fails to check in online before arriving at the departure airport, or confirms the wrong name in a booking, then the fault lies with the passenger, not with the Ryanair system or the Ryanair app.
[ Ryanair denies its booking system changes names. This video suggests otherwiseOpens in new window ]
“As confirmed above, we will provide a refund of one bag fee to [Josephine] although clearly she made two separate baggage bookings on the same day using two different payment methods and so this was not a problem with the Ryanair system but rather a passenger error.
“There [sic] errors did not arise from any ‘confusing correspondence from the airline’, which is yet another invention on your part, unsupported by any evidence whatsoever. We sell over 700,000 seats every day to consumers in over 40 different countries. Our systems, and our communications are clear and readily comprehensible. Please stop inventing spurious claims that obvious passenger errors are due to ‘unreliable apps’ or ‘confusing communications’ when, as in these cases, they are clearly not.”
As we said in response, we do not and never have invented “spurious claims” about Ryanair or any other company. We simply share our readers’ stories with the airline (in this case), give it the chance to respond and allow our readers to make judgments on what they have read.
