Elderly Couple Furious After Ryanair Charged Them £110 To Print Boarding Passes

An angry elderly couple expressed their frustration when Ryanair levied a fee of £110 for printing their boarding passes after they mistakenly downloaded their return passes.

Ruth Jaffe, 79, and her 80-year-old spouse, Peter, were en route from London Stansted to Bergerac, France. They had checked in online, but without realising, had downloaded the return passes, not the outbound.

The couple, from Ealing in west London, were scheduled to fly with the low-cost airline on Friday, August 11.

Ruth, a retired GP, said that she had already paid £22 to reserve seats, ensuring she and her disabled husband could sit together.

However, upon their arrival at the airport, Ruth came to the realisation that she had erroneously obtained the boarding passes meant for their return journey.

She approached the service desk and explained her predicament, but Ryanair decided to impose a £55 charge on both her and Mr. Jaffe for printing the correct passes.

When asked, the airline said the couple had been ‘correctly charged the airport check-in fee of £55 per passenger’.

Mrs Jaffe told The Metro: “The website was very confusing, they’re trying to get you to add on this and that”.

“I didn’t realise I was checking in for the return flight. At the airport, I tried to get the boarding card and it said check in is closed and I needed to go to the desk.

‘They said that’s £55 per person. I thought it was absolutely disgusting but I had no option so paid up. It was very stressful.

‘The nice girl at the desk told me to complain to Ryanair. I could afford to pay for it but it made me furious. We’re lucky we can afford it but for a family it would be absolutely disastrous.’

The couple had already paid £278 for their return flights to France with Ryanair.

Ms Jaffe’s daughter took to Twitter to share what happened. Her post now has more than 156,000 likes with many people sharing their shock in the comments.

Ms Jaffe added: ‘It’s fantastic how people have supported us.  We’d booked our flights back so we didn’t have an option, we were stuck with them”.

Hey @Ryanair, my parents who are in their 70s and 80s, had accidentally downloaded the return flight boarding card instead of the outgoing ones and you charged them £110 to print them at the airport. £110 for 2 pieces of paper which took 1 minute. Shame on you

— Old School House Venosc 💙 (@old_school_alps) August 13, 2023

“I’d like to be given back my money please. Having bought the tickets in advance, I’m very p***** off about it”, said Mrs Jaffe.

One person said in the comments: ‘I wouldn’t make an exception for most people because these rules are there for a reason, but I think in this case Ryanair should refund the money.’

Another wrote: ‘Ryanair are the worst airline! Should be avoided at all cost!’

A third added: ‘This happened to me in 2013. Was €70 then. Good to see they’re keeping up with inflation.’

Ryanair’s social media team – normally so quick off the mark when it comes to posting a laddish meme – has remained eerily silent.

Indeed, in a statement to The Daily Telegraph, Ryanair channelled O’Leary’s logic, if not his tone. It said: “As per Ryanair’s T&Cs, which these passengers agreed to at the time of booking, these passengers failed to check-in online for their outbound flight from Stansted Airport (Aug 11) despite being advised to do so via email the day before travel (Aug 10) and therefore were correctly charged the airport check-in fee of £55 per passenger.”

Here are nine of the worst fees to watch out for.

The airport check-in fee: £55
This is the one that caught out the parents of the Twitter user over the weekend.

Anyone who forgets to check in online (from 30 days before departure for a fee, or from four days before departure for free) will be hit with a £55 per person charge.

Online check-in can only be completed at least two hours before departure, which catches out many of those who realise they’ve forgotten when they arrive at the airport and try to do it using their phone.

For some reason, the fee is cut to £30 for flights from Spain.

The boarding card reissue fee: £20
If you check in online successfully but are unable to show a boarding pass – perhaps because you’ve lost the paper copy and haven’t downloaded the Ryanair app, or perhaps because your phone’s battery has died – you’ll have to stump up £20 per person for a new one.

The flight change fee: £45
The 2013 nicety campaign also saw the introduction of a 24-hour grace period during which Ryanair passengers can correct minor errors to flight bookings free of charge. After that, changing your flight costs a hefty £45 per person.

Yes, that means it’s sometimes more cost-effective to buy a new ticket entirely.

The name change fee: £115
Make an error when typing your name and the penalty is even more severe: £115.

The checked bag fee: £59.99
Yes, this is an entirely optional fee. One doesn’t need to take a checked bag on holiday if one is adept at squeezing one’s belongings into a cabin case.

The excess baggage fee: £11
If your hold bag exceeds the weight limit, you’ll need to stump up £11 per kilo at the airport kiosk, or £9 per kilo if you pay online at least two hours before departure.

The seat selection fee: Up to £30
Again, this is an optional fee. You can let Ryanair assign you a seat free of charge – but then you do run the risk of being split up from other travellers on your booking.

Fees for seat selection range from £2-£15 for standard seats, depending on your route, £6-£19 for “front” seats, or £13-£30 for extra legroom seats.

The oxygen fee: £55
No, this isn’t a new wheeze where Ryanair cuts off the plane’s oxygen supply if you don’t hand over your credit card details. It is in fact a charge for the use of therapeutic oxygen – it seems those who need it for medical reasons cannot bring their own.

The being British tax: 14 per cent
Ryanair, uniquely, charges the same in pounds and euros for all extras, no matter what the official exchange rate is. This means, for example, that Britons must pay £25 to take an infant on board, while Europeans pay the equivalent of £21.56.

What do you think of the charges? Should Ryanair be more lenient with mistakes? Have you been stung?

Let us know in the comments below.