Ryanair passenger misses flight over ‘faint’ ink
English school teacher Sue Craig, 54 paid an extra £10 (€11) for an online boarding pass for a flight to Malaga, which she printed on her home computer.
But when she arrived at Bournemouth Airport an hour and a half before her flight, Ryanair staff said the barcode on her pass had failed to scan.
Instead of manually typing in the data, she was directed to Ryanair’s service desk, where she had to queue for so long the gate closed and the flight took off without her.
“The ink cartridge used was brand new, there was nothing wrong with it. This makes a mockery of online boarding.”
Ms Craig had been due to take a week’s holiday on the Costa Del Sol, but lost both her £70 (€80) ticket and the £50 (€57) she had paid in advance for airport parking.
She said she was “livid” with the airline for ruining her holiday and with the treatment by airline staff.
Ms Craig said “The copy of the boarding pass I printed out was clean and crisp and bold and why it was unable to scan I don’t know.”
Ryanair told her her best hope of going on holiday was to take another flight to Malaga that left the following day from Bristol – but it would cost her an extra £100.
Stephen McNamara, a spokesman for Ryanair, said: “The print quality of this passenger’s boarding pass was too faint to be read by airport security scanners and the passenger was asked to return to the ticket desk.
“Ryanair could not delay or inconvenience a flight of 180 passengers because this passenger failed to print a valid, legible or readable boarding pass.”
