Europe’s largest budget airline, Ryanair, is well-known for its long list of fees and ancillary charges, but the low-cost carrier has just taken the concept to the next level with its most expensive fee ever.
In a desperate effort to stamp out unruly behavior, the Dublin-based airline is now threatening to charge a fee of €500 or £500 (US $678) to anyone who is so disruptive that they end up being chucked off their flight.
Ryanair is quick to point out that unruly passenger behavior is still relatively rare and that it is far from the only airline in Europe being forced to deal with loutish and aggressive customers. Nonetheless, Ryanair has had enough.
In the last few months, we’ve seen Ryanair launch a major campaign to clamp down on unruly behavior, pushing for criminal charges in several high-profile cases and even pursuing its own private civil case against one passenger.
“It is unacceptable that passengers are made to suffer unnecessary disruption because of one unruly passenger’s behavior,” slammed a Ryanair spokesperson.
“To help ensure that our passengers and crew travel in a comfortable and stress-free environment, without unnecessary disruption caused by a tiny number of unruly passengers, we have introduced a £500 fine, which will be issued to any passengers offloaded from aircraft as a result of their misconduct.”
How Ryanair would enforce this fine remains to be seen. We reached out to Ryanair for clarification, but the airline did not respond to a request for comment.
Ryanair could send letters demanding payment from unruly passengers, but ultimately, it appears that lawyers would have to pursue fine dodgers through the courts across Europe.
It also seems as if this new €500 fine only applies to passengers who are offloaded from a flight before it has departed. In the event that someone’s behavior becomes so bad at 35,000 feet and prompts an emergency diversion, Ryanair is keen to make the unruly cover the entire cost of the diversion.
Something that could cost thousands of Euros.
In April, Ryanair said it had filed a €3,000 civil lawsuit against a customer who prompted a diversion of a flight from Berlin to Marrakesh. This is, however, just small change compared to the €15,000 lawsuit Ryanair has filed against another unruly passenger.
In that case, the diversion ended up with all the passengers needing to stay in hotels overnight, so Ryanair is claiming the cost of the accommodation, a replacement crew, aircraft parking charges, and even lost inflight sales.
As well as Ryanair’s civil fine, unruly passengers could be slapped with much larger fines through the criminal courts. In March, a court in Malta fined a Ryanair passenger €2,000 for smoking and refusing to comply with crew member instructions on a flight from Cologne.
This is one reason why airlines in Britain would like to have airports stop serving alcohol, passengers. especially going to holiday destinations or soccer (futbal) matches often drink too much before they leave and are causing problems.