who is dealing with it best

[Babbles]

We've just driven from Herault to Lancashire via Wiltshire and Leicestershire, total time 30 hours 48 minutes.

No problems on the motorways in France, the service stations were busier than normal with the loo's being a bit grim. Arrived at Euro tunnel at midnight( booked on one at 8am) but managed to get on the 2.55 am but it wasn't that busy. The motorways in England were the worst bit as there are huge amount of roadworks everywhere replacing the central reservation.

So, on the whole Ryanair have dealt with the situation very well, we had rebooked some of our flights for wednesday and have managed to apply for refunds, one fight was swapped for a bmibaby flight Toulouse - Manchester on wednesday , its still not listed as one that has been cancelled , its extremely unlikely to fly and when you do want a refund you have to write in, there is no online method of doing it, with the post now disrupted this is not really a practical solution. My only issue with Ryanair is that we have a fight booked for next sunday to Nimes which we won't need but I can't change without a £50 fee, if I could change it free of charge it would fee up a seat for that flight which I'm sure will be needed by someone if the flight does take place, as it is we'll wait to see if its cancelled to see if we can get a refund. But it does seem wrong to fly with an empty seat.

[PeterG]

[quote user="Babbles"] My only issue with Ryanair is that we have a fight booked for next sunday [/quote]

Can I come and watch?                      It would be nice to see MOL duffed up a bit..

[EmilyA]

Early last week we were trying to book an LD lines crossing for my daughter and two small grandchildren to come over as foot passengers during half term week at the end of May. Cost around £65, but we didn't book it because she had to confirm the dates with work. Just looked again and the cost is now £240 for the same dates!

regards

Em

[Gardengirl]

I've been quite impressed with Ryanair's method of dealing with the current problem; they've made it very easy to change flights, and have forecast later dates than I've heard from other airlines etc. [:)]

Like Bubbles, we now have 2 seats we don't need, as we've been offered a lift to the south of France, which is a lot better than a possible flight. However, if flights are resumed by then, we'll have taken up 2 seats from Luton to Nimes which we don't require, and somebody else might be desperate for them. A refund would be very nice, but that's not the principle here. There's no way of cancelling for passengers. The price at each rebooking has remained at the price we paid originally, so in fact Ryanair could charge a lot more for them; the cost is about £30 per seat higher now for a new booking, and no doubt they could ask a lot more as Friday approaches.

Our friend has booked to come over on Thursday through the tunnel, to bring back stranded family members. I was surprised to find the cost was only £79, which I thought was very fair; no profiteering there. We have one of Eurotunnel's season tickets, so I've booked the return trip for Friday using that, so the total cost for the return trip will be £59.

 

[joidevie]

Ryanair seem to be handling things pretty well - and they did too during the snow at the beginning of the year when 3 times I got caught up in the chaos, and each time they managed to get us to the best possible destination..

From their web site today:

“We presently hope to resume our full scheduled flight operations

(subject only to ATC restrictions and weather forecasts) by 1300hrs on

Friday 23^rd April and we have issued instructions to all of

our airports that our immediate priority will be to ensure that no seat

operates empty, while there are backlogs of disrupted passengers

wishing to travel. Accordingly Ryanair will be operating extra flights

on those routes where we believe there are significant numbers of

disrupted passengers. Ryanair will also be suspending all airport

check-in and baggage fees during the initial days so that our handling

agents can prioritise getting flights out on time and processing

standby passenger lists. Similarly, while we will consider all

passenger requests for reimbursement of reasonable receipted expenses

over the past week, any such reimbursement will be limited to the

original air fare paid by each passenger."

Maybe they are planning to operate a genuine

"standby" system waiting to see how many passengers actually go through

security and then allocate the seats on.. In India, when traveling on

internal airlines, you can cancel your flights and receive a sliding

scale of refund depending on the time/date before departure. Even if

you only received 20% of your fare back, this would surely free up more

seats as well..