Travelling by Ryanair? Forgotten to print out your boarding pass? According to a Spanish judge, Mick O’Leary’s gang can’t charge you.
In a landmark ruling, Judge Barbara Maria Cordoba told a sitting of the Barcelona Commercial Court that because “the normal practice over the years has been that the obligation to issue the boarding card has always fallen on the carrier” the low cost carrier cannot apply a charge to travellers who forget or mislay their print out.
The ruling came about as a result of a case that was brought gainst the Irish airline by Snr Dan Miro, a Spanish lawyer who had failed to print his boarding card before arriving at the airport and was subsequently faced with a fee of €40.
Ryanair are notorious for their long list of extra charges that can substantially increase the cost of a flight.
Making her ruling, Judge Cordoba said, “I declare unfair and therefore void the clause in the contract in which Ryanair obliges the passenger to be the one who brings the printed boarding pass to travel or face a penalty of €40.”
“The court is wrong,” said Ryanair spokesman Daniel de Carvalho, who claims that forgetting a boarding pass is almost the same as forgetting a passport. “You need the boarding card to fly.
“If a passenger arrives without a boarding card, we find an ad hoc solution to their problem. The €40 is a penalty for doing that. We serve the boarding card in exactly the same way that the passenger makes the booking, by internet.
“If the problem is the €40 charge for this service, we’ll simply stop offering the service. That, of course, will mean the passenger who arrives without a boarding card cannot fly.”
Ryanair may appeal the ruling.
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