Snow Experience with Ryanair on Dublin Airport over Xmas

This is a letter I sent to Ryanair CS because of the hilarious snow experience on Dublin Airport on 23/12/2010...
Ryanair + Dublin Airport: that’s a killer combo...


Dear Sir(s),
I’m writing this letter to complain about the utterly Ryanair staff incompetence and behaviour (actually lack of any behaviour at all) at Dublin Airport on the 23rd of December of 2010. Because of such unacceptable behaviour from members of a company that claims to be one of the biggest in Europe, I couldn’t rebook my just cancelled flight to Barcelona to a decent date to minimize the inconvenience while such flights were available.
At 6 pm on Dec 23rd after several delays and gate changes, including a hilarious change to gate 101, which we “muggles” seem unable to see such gate at the airport; our FR 6395 flight to Barcelona was at last cancelled while we were stuck inside the plane waiting for a de-icing “sprinkler” that never come... It never came because the “odds were against us”: 2 sprinklers for dozens of stranded air crafts, there are more chances of getting to Spain by swimming. But that’s another story...
After we disembark the aircraft and passed the passport control area (we were stalled here by eejits as well not allowing passengers or “cattle” as your call us to leave the boarding area) we managed to get to the ryanair ticket’s desks and to our surprise (or not really) there was not a living soul there on a Thursday afternoon! THIS IS TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE: hundreds of stranded passengers because the wise guys that run the airport think that snowing in winter is a rare phenomena in northern Europe AND NOBODY AT THE RYANAIR TICKETS DESK ON A THURSDAY AFTERNOON FOR ANY REBOOKING! HOW CONVENIENT!!!! It is a joke seeing the airport rulers amazed at snowing in winter (may be they expect to snow in summer?). It is a bigger joke seeing farming tractors cleaning up a huge runway, but what can you expect when the airport is run by eejits that are high on Jameson/Guinness for most of the time? It is absolutely outrageous seeing air line staff running away from passengers like children scared of the bogeyman. The only information I got was from the airport staff saying that ryanair staff had gone home; probably to scratch their balls and pussies better as it seems the less they do the less they want to make.
So without anyone at the tickets desk and with the ryanair site down all the time we had to stay all night long queuing at the tickets desk waiting for a chance to rebook. A few hours later someone fixed the ryanair site and I noticed that flight FR6395 was not in the list of cancelled flights for Dec 23rd and when I tried to manage my booking to rebook a new flight I couldn’t because it was saying that the flight was closed or there was less than 4 hours for its departure! So I couldn’t do any change.
At 3AM someone made us move to the check in desk. All hell broke loose and who was queuing in front became the last of the new queue because the Ryanair staff idiots warned first people at the end of the queue. Then after the re-queuing and pushing at 5AM we were told that all flights until at least 27th were fully booked and we had to do the changes online. I claimed that I couldn’t do anything with my flight and I was told to wait because in a few hours they would update the system and I would be able to do it.
So I waited a few hours and as I still couldn’t do anything and there was an available flight for Madrid on the Monday 27th I headed again to the airport. This flight suited me but I couldn’t rebook my flight online because my flight to Barcelona was not marked as cancelled in the system. When I got to the airport I queued at the ryanair ticket desk again for hours and finally I was told there that some another incompetent had forgotten to close the flight in the system and mark it as cancelled; so that way I could never rebook another flight. And because of that incompetent the flight that was available to Madrid on Monday 27th when I tried to rebook was by then gone. So I had to get a flight through a much more risky route and much later than Monday 27th; which wrecked not only my Christmas arrangements but my New Year’s Eve arrangements as well! All this, not because of the snow, but because of Ryanair’s staff utterly incompetence.
I was instructed then by the ticket desk to write a complaint letter exposing the situation and send it to this address. I’m pretty sure it won’t make a difference because you see us as cattle but at least it will be online in some forums as well so people can have a laugh at the biggest airline company “wannabes” (like you laugh from us when you see us stranded on land).
It is too much incompetence together like the one you only expect to find in 3rd world countries:
- There should have been someone at the ticket desks at 6pm on December, 23rd to rebook flights. IT WAS NOT XMAS EVE YET, ALTHOUGH THEY SEEMED DESPERATE FOR IT TO BE.
- Someone should have closed the flight and marked it as cancelled on the system so that we could do something with it online, like rebooking! This way we could do nothing while lots of available tickets were literally flying online (unlike the frozen planes).
- Because of that I couldn’t rebook the best suitable available flight at the time I was trying to.
- And so as I was left with the scraps and had only the option for a flight much later; my New Year’s Eve reservations (which are paid in advance) went trough the drain.
- The detail of gate 101 is the “cherry on top of the cake”... It is like “Harry Potter” meets “The Twilight Zone”
Having the feeling that the ticket’s desk staff suggestion to write to you is useless and you have thousands of claims to process (send to the dump bin) I keep it short and just subscribe:
_________________________________________
(XXXX XXXX)


PS: To avoid that the Dublin Airport turns into a refugee camp on the next winters to come, like it happened this winter and last winter or anytime there’s more than 1 cm of snow, here are some suggestions you should try to propose to DAA. I hope this will help so Dublin Airport doesn’t become again the joke of European Aviation and known as “Mickey Mouse Airport” as it is currently.
- FOR NEXT WINTER: close the airport for the winter months so that you don’t waste people’s time and money. That way we can get ferry trips booked in advance. Ferries are much faster than stranded airplanes waiting for snow to melt or waiting for leprechauns to help defrosting the air crafts. IF YOU CAN’T COPE WITH A FART OF SNOW DO US A FAVOUR AND CLOSE FOR THE WINTER MONTHS LIKE IN REMOTE AREAS OF ALASKA. THANK YOU.
- If the previous option is not feasible because of the possibility of riots, buy decent snow cleaners (farming tractors won’t do the job as you probably have figured out by now, following the usual circus around this time of the year) and read “Coping with snow for Dummies” by German/Polish/Russian Airports. REMEMBER Ireland is part of Northern Europe and it is in the same latitude as Canada. SO DON’T TELL ME IT IS SEVERE WEATHER CONDITIONS: AS LONG AS THERE ARE CARS/BUSES ON THE ROADS IT IS NOT SEVERE WEATHER! If you had the same amount of snow in Ireland as in Germany probably the island would have been literally sunken and swallowed by the Atlantic by now, not only economically but also physically. And I’m pretty sure you would be just watching without acting on it. Even my home country where temperatures get to 40 degrees in summer has snow cleaners. Know why? Because it still snows in winter, like anywhere in the northern hemisphere far enough from the tropics!
- Make sure the main DAA roles are given to people not so high on Jameson/Guinness like the current DAA fat cats and your government... This way the people that rule the airport will be much closer to accept that snowing in winter is a normal thing in Northern Europe, like all countries worldwide. And by accepting the “fatality” that it tends to snow in winter, they will act accordingly for the near future.
- Not expecting snow in winter in Northern Europe is like “Monty Python” meets “Black Adder” and is more serious than schedule a flight to a non-existing gate. It is like “doing one isolated mistake in a moment of distraction” vs “base your whole life in a mistake”.