I have been travelling for the last 15 years; Never in the past 15 years have I been belittled so much as I was in last week’s trip.
By ow it should be obvious that for the past 15 years of travelling, I was always on time for everything from the luggage drop off and control to the boarding gate. Last week’s trip came to break the tradition…-lol.
The day started as any usual travelling day starts. I woke up quite early to make sure that all was packed,and all was in order.After making sure that all was packed and ready it was time to depart. Reaching the airport I immediately left the largest luggage to get under the plane and I left to go towards the security check. As per the usual process I passed the check as normal and moved towards the Duty Free shopping floor.
By that time it was around 13:35 approximately, which meant that I ha d about 1.5 hours left to roam, since the gate was closing a little after 16:00… At this point I should point out that the flight’s departure time was exactly at 16:35… So it would stand to reason and it would make sense for anyone with a little common sense that the gates would make a final announcement at about 10 minutes before departure- (that would be 20past 16:00) and the gate would close five minutes later…
Having finished lunch it was about half three; me, like any reasonable being assuming that the gate would open around 15:45 to maybe 50, I stayed on the shopping floor- like any reasonable man… ( you will see why I keep saying it ) Since the plane was leaving 35 minutes past, i made my way towards the gate about 15 minutes earlier. I had by that time reached the gate at exactly 16:15. At some point, my attention was drawn on the board and that was the first “shock” for the day. The gate was closed. For that there was no doubt… what is even more shocking that I was not the only one that was left outside the plane- mind you though I was 15 whole minutes earlier there- there were another 20 people that were left outside the plane.
After trying to resonate with the ground personnel in a calm tone, they started shouting ad being rude. They stated that they checked our large luggages out and that we should return any spirits bought from the shopping floor…they became extremely rude and aggressive and we almost came into hands. They real “cherry on top” was that they had the audacity, to tell us that if we wanted to fly with the same flight the next day (24 hrs exactly- as there was not her flight that was leaving at that time the next day) we were to pay 100£ each…
At this point I was having none of it, so I decided to “rebook” the flight from another airport, as I was not going to sit there for 24 hrs. I managed to find a flight from Gatwick with a 12 hour difference and it was slightly less expensive; the flight was leaving from Gatwick at 05:50 in the morning… there was a total of 12 hours that I had to go through; 4 hours to Gatwick and 8 hours waiting at the airport.
My advice towards anyone who wishes to travel from that airport and with that company, is, please avoid travelling with Ryanair as they have little respect over any situation and anyone in general. We could have very well been boarded on that flight at 16:35 were it not for the twot rude and aggressive people of staff. Oh and before I forget it the word refund is not part of their policy nor their vocabulary.