Ryan Air strikes

[Untamedtoad]

Meant to be returning from Spain (Valencia) on 23rd Aug, and it's just been announced this is now one of the proposed RyanAir pilot strike days. I'm now wondering whether or not to go ahead with the trip. Am meant to be travelling solo with 2 young children, and the thought of being stranded abroad is scaring me. I can't find any info as yet as to which flights are likely to be affected, it just says flights operated by UK pilots. Was really looking forward to this trip, but was anxious about it being my first time abroad with dc and without dh, and just wanted it to go as smoothly as possible. Will be set to lose about a grand if I cancel now, as didn't take out cancellation insurance, and have already paid non refundable deposits for kennels/cattery, airport parking, paid for hotel in full, and flights. Wwyd?

Travel insurance doesn’t cover strikes

@Mner2019 from what I've read the dates are highly unlikely to change now, especially not be brought forward as they're meant to give 2 weeks notice to the airline of proposed strikes so if anything, the strike could get delayed, but unlikely now. Think these dates seem pretty set, and have been chosen due to them being particularly busy travel days. Your trip sounds pretty secure.

@paddingtonthebear did you get a partial refund from RyanAir? Or do you mean from hotel etc? If I thought I could get even 50% of our money back I'd cancel, but we seem set to lose it all if we cancel so really stuck.

Balls re travel insurance. At least it was cheap!

Thanks unnamed toad. Hope you guys manage to work round it. They are such an awful company to have to deal with.

travel insurance doesn’t cover strikes
Mine does. But only if purchased before the announcement of strike action was made (which mine was)
My flight is Athens to London and then I have a connecting flight on another airline to Lisbon. Lucky I have insurance or I’d lose all value on the second flight.

@Untamedtoad we booked a package holiday but we have just cancelled the accommodation part (minus £50 cancellation fee). We haven’t cancelled the flight element as the cancellation fees to do that were too high. So if the return flight is cancelled due to a strike we can claim the return leg back. Which is better than nothing. If not we have lost the whole cost of the flights but recouped most of accommodation cost. The deadline to do this was yesterday, otherwise we would be in the same situation as you and would get nothing if we cancelled/didn’t go. It made sense to do it. If there was no cancellation option we probably would have just gone and hoped for the best. We looked at the option of driving instead of flying but it would have been around £600+ more to do that on top of what we already paid.

The irony of it is that we chose the dates because they were cheaper. If we had chosen two weeks before it now would have cost us less 😆

Don't expect anything from Ryanair. They are just twats to passengers. I have had a flight cancelled before and joined a queue of hundreds of metres to rebook as was at the airport. Several other Ryanair flights were cancelled so there were thousands of us. Staff were not bothered. I was with a colleague but here were fAmilies with really young kids and they did nothing to prioritise the really young ones. They don't lay on extra flights either

Basically I wasn't prepared to wait all night to rebook so did online (same system they use) and paid £1000 for new tickets.

The experience has meant I NEVER use Ryanair. I don't care if cheaper. Their attitude is we are the cheapest so don't expect anything and when it goes wrong that's exactly what happens

If they do strike, there won't be capacity I'm Ryanair or prob even other airlines for several days so it will be either stay put or use train etc if possible.

Oh and Ryanair will fight the statutory compensation all the way even though it is legally clear they have to pay and have been told this before by the CAA

No idea what your budget is or where you are going back to but is it worth just booking new return flights to save losing all the money? An adult flight on EasyJet from Valencia on 23 August is currently £173 for example. A connecting flight to Heathrow with Iberia is about £145 and takes five hours as it’s a sensible connection.

Actually looking at Skyscanner you can get a flight for just over £100 - connecting but five hours in total. That’s to London though but might be worth being creative if that’s not good for you - ground travel in the UK might not be too awful if your local airport doesn’t have any other options compared to losing your holiday or getting stuck.

I was thinking of booking Ryanair next year but having serious doubts now. Barsard company but tbh I blame too management not the lower down staff.

Ok, thanks, OP, that’s really helpful.

And thanks to everyone who’s mentioned insurance - I’ll see if we’re covered.

Significant anniversary - child free weekend away (first time for more than a night since I can't remember when) which will be difficult to arrange childcare for since the nearest GP lives 3 hrs' drive away.

We've decided to buy new flights out the evening before and avoid the strike day altoghether because it was cheaper than paying the amendment fees for the flights! Plus extra for changing the car parking reservation so an extra £100 which we decided that we would rather do than suffer the uncertainty/write off the entire weekend. Thankfully, the extra night's hotel is covered by loyalty points so zero cost there, especially since we won't arrive until 9pm in any event.

Seats on our new flight out on the 21st are more expensive this morning. I guess there are many who’ve made the same decision to rebuy their flights for a day earlier. For us, it was just under £100 to salvage our weekend. £80 for 2 x single flights plus seat selections plus priority boarding and a new extra £18 more to amend our car parking. Don’t need the stress - it’s our 20th wedding anniversary!

sansou did you buy new seats from scratch or try to rearrange your old ones?

I tried to rearrange the old ones at first but realised that the amendment fees, etc for changing my outward flights were more than just booking new ones from scratch so no brainer, I booked new ones from scratch - crazy I know! Obviously, just the outward flights - I didn't have to change my return flights.

Just a heads up that if you do become entitled to compo there's a brilliant free tool on Money Supermarket called Resolver which pretty much makes the claim for you.

Also if you are delayed or flight cancelled etc keep your receipts for everything including snacks at the airport as they can be submitted too. Easy to chuck them in the bin with the packets but I wish I'd hung onto mine as a five hour delay amounted to a surprising amount of comfort eating for the three of us!

Ryanair are so crap, they have a serious lack of reps at the airport so when there is a problem it's impossible to find out what's going on. Hope it blows over before your hols x

I am due to fly back to the Uk from Portugal on 23rd August. I would rather like to know before I leave for the airport ( which is 60 miles away) if the flight has been cancelled as I am in the fortunate position of having a place out here and no rush to come back. I could easily hang on for a few more days but really don't want to drive all that way, give the car rental back and then have to hire a new one and go back again.

Could be even more of a problem as there is a fuel strike here starting tomorrow...

I hate Ryan air but the flight was a third of the price of the Easyjet one...

We’ve just changed our flights to the next day. Sucked up the charge (which was only one third of the price of a whole new set of flights). So glad we did. Thanks for all the advice on this thread.

@ rrg1 "if your flight is cancelled and you have NOT been notified 14 days ahead, then you will be due €250 per person compensation under EU rules"

Is that on top of refunding the cost of your flights?

We booked our flight to Spain in February and we fly out on one of the dates announced for Spanish Ryanair cabin crew to strike. Even if they refunded the cost of the flights, there's no way we'd be able to fly with another airline for anything like the price we paid back in February so we'd just have to forfeit the break (we're just going for a weekend so really no point waiting to be put on the next available flight) The extra money would be something at least, and I'd book with another airline for next time!

Does anyone think wishful that these strikes might be averted?

Apologies @rrg1 I tried to link to your name in my post but got it wrong!

I was affected by the strike last year, booked myself a flight from the closest city to me and had no problem whatsoever getting my money back.
Unfortunately, I may be affected next week too, it’s really ruining my holiday, as I travel with other people and I don’t know if we will all be able to be relocated to the same flight two days later.
Last year we were told one week before, it seems like this time round they’re waiting longer.
I wish I knew either way, the uncertainty is killing me.

I had no idea about this. We fly to alicante tomorrow and return on the 22nd. Ffs!

Whoops sorry wrong post!