Why did Ryanair refuse my mother a wheelchair?

Yeah, I know: it sounds like a joke headline. Unfortunately, it isn't. On Friday night my mother was flying from Pisa to Dublin, and unable to walk due to a sudden hip injury, she asked Ryanair for a wheelchair at the airport They refused, and I'd like to know why.

To: Michael O'Leary, Director Ryanair

Mr. O'Leary,
I am an Irishman living in London, and have regularly availed of the cut-price flights that your company has made available to the market. I have always accepted that with such low prices, there come predictable variations from the norm of air travel experience. Your arcane queuing system, for example, is a bizarrely compelling experiment in social Darwinism.

But still, thanks to the efforts of Ryanair, an average guy like me can take cheap visits home to see the folks and friends. The tradeoff is that I have come to accept the idiosyncrasies of Ryanair. But this morning I am as angry as I ever have been in my adult life. I have learned that last Friday night, my 72-year-old mother was refused a wheelchair by Ryanair's staff airport at Pisa airport. Quite frankly Mr. O'Leary, I would like an explanation for the staggeringly insensitive, humiliating and utterly inhuman treatment that an elderly, disabled woman received at the hands of your company. She would have written this letter herself, but she is currently unable to move from her bed - where she is expected to spend the better part of the next month.

While on holiday, my mother was struck down with a spinal and hip injury. It's unclear exactly what caused the problem, but according to the doctor who examined my mother in Dublin upon her return, it was ­ if you can believe such a train-wreck of a story - incurred whilst helping her own 91-year-old mother in the bathroom a week before. The injury flared up when she flew to Italy, sending her spine muscles into spasm and freezing her hip.

As a result she spent four nights in a hotel bed, being regularly examined by two doctors who feared a serious hip injury. She had no feeling in her right hip and could not walk or stand unsupported. Eventually, helped to the airport by a friend, she requested a wheelchair from a Ryanair staff member to help her get to the plane: this, by the by, after several unsuccessful attempts to secure the use of one through a phone call to Ryanair earlier that day. A young Italian Ryanair employee at Pisa did everything that she could but informed my mother that she needed to have booked the wheelchair 24 hours in advance. The young lady also expressed her horror at my mothers' treatment and was at pains to say that the problem rested with the policy of Ryanair staff in Dublin.

The young lady then managed to ask the flight Captain (flight FR 9907, Pisa to Dublin, 15th September 2006) if an exception could be made. The answer was no. When my mother was finally helped onto the flight (by other passengers: not your staff) there was, in a final ironic insult, an empty wheelchair sitting on the runway.

Now, if you will allow me to pause for just a moment. I want to make sure that I've understood all of this properly. If someone - who is not an habitual wheelchair user - has a accident on their holiday, are they best advised to try and have the accident about, say, oh I don't know, 27 hours before take off and then, whilst being rolled into A&E, they should remember to drop Ryanair a bell and let them know that they require a wheelchair? Is that correct? A task made all the easier, I am sure, by the prominent placement of a contact phone number on your company website.

Mr. O'Leary, it would be all too easy for me to fly off the handle about now: to explode into a tirade of four-lettered venom worthy of Twink, but this isn't the first time that Ryanair have been obstreperous about wheelchairs, so I doubt such a rant will change anything now. Instead I would like to simply say this: you should be embarrassed. Embarrassed by your inhuman corporate policies. Embarrassed for the manner in which you treat your customers: like cattle. Embarrassed for the avaricious, mendacious, Gordon Gecko culture of smug, oily, corporate greed that you have fostered in many (but thankfully not all) the staff you employ. You should be embarrassed for giving Ireland, the Irish people and Irish business such an appalling reputation in every corner of Europe. Congratulations Mr. O'Leary - you've cut those costs – but you've put the fumble back in the greasy till.

I expect of course that this letter, like the countless others that seem to regularly grace the letters pages of our newspapers, will be ignored. I understand of course that Ryanair have more pressing concerns than the welfare of its customers right now: busy as you are suing the British government for having the temerity to put the safety of its citizens above your profit margins. But, no matter, in addition to one more letter to ignore, you now have one less passenger to ignore.

Yours, in utter contempt,

Damien DeBarra

Discussion on p45rant.com »

I presume you're aware that ALL passengers now pay a "wheelchair levy" since this case.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3443739.stm

i am a journalist interested in doing a story on your experience... please let me know if you are interested.

Luc,
I've mailed you at the e-mail address you provided in your comment.

Being English born of Irish parents, Kerry & Mayo (I didn't know who to suport today!!). And probably being one of the fair percentage of those people travelling to Ireland with Ryan Air, I know they are generally the cheapest of flights (I do check), but I HATE their version of the cost of a flight ticket. This is the flight cost, airport fess, plus blah, blah, blah..... I get on a train into London and it cost X amount, they don't tell me how much it is for the train, how much it is for the train to enter the station, etc, etc, etc,,,,,, Tell me the cost of the flight not some notional cost of the flight itself............ They maybe cheap, they maybe Irish, but there aren't clever...

Great letter, hope you mother is up and about soon.

Greasy says it all.

Last time I took a Ryanair Flight anywhere I watched them bounce my bike of the tarmac, dispite the bright yellow "Fragile" stickers covering every part of its carrier case. I gladly pay extra if I have to for Aer lingus, British Airways etc. O'Leary's recent attempts to sue the British government over its "Over the top" attempts to ensure our safety in the air just galvanised my resolve never to use the Money grabbing little turds firm again. If he thinks that kind of security is over the top, where else does he believe money is being wasted? Who needs seatbelts on a plane anyway Micheal? Surely theres a few quid to be saved there! And that Co-Pilot! Sure he's only scratching his arse up there, isn't he?

Your mother's experience sounds very unpleasant, Damien. I am "of a certain age" and have simply stopped travelling on the cheaper airlines. My young friends have so many difficult journeys to describe, that there seems to be nothing gained by trying to save money, when measured against comfort.
Air travellers do not complain enough and when they do the airline employees can be "difficult".

I hope that Luc gets to the bottom of your story and that your mother is offered an apology, at the very least.

Eh, how did she ge to the airport? did they not issue her with a wheelchair at the hospital that saw her?

And Idlebones you dont think these security measures are a bit extreme, did you ever travel through Heathrow before the Arabs became flavour of the month? remember what that was like, we dont seem to complain as much when its being visited on someone else.

she was helped to the airport by a friend (as it says above). she didn't go to a hospital - doctors came to see her (as it says above).

A similar story.

http://www.irishpost.co.uk/news/story.asp?j=4561

"Congratulations Mr. O'Leary - you've cut those costs – but you've put the fumble back in the greasy till."

Excellent piece and I agree with the greasy skeletal sentiment. Ryanair's codology really gets me riled...

But a point on those low costs that MOL and Ryanair constantly trumpet. You might notice that it's always made in relation to his employee/disabled, blind or fully functional customer screwing private-anti-union system. As if they go hand in hand.

However the uncomfortable fact for this ideology is that the main cost reduction resulting in cheap air travel came with the idea of having a bus in the air and the dropping of the privileged cache previously associated with it.

Prior to this both public and private airlines were charging an er arm and a leg. The reduction in employee and customer standards are not entirely related to the low price to the consumer but more so are represented in Ryanair's profits... Strip MOLs b.s away and the savings become clearer.

And as an aside particularly when you compare this to other modes of transport, say railway and buses. Note; that their main cost 'reduction' in their movement form public to private has resulted in an increase in prices, a decrease in safety and nationalisation/part nationalisation in places (such as in the UK). However as a more even starting comparison example in that they started out in the main as stripped down 'buses on the ground' to begin with...but don't expect The Furher (as he likes to be called) to mention any of that.

Anyway, hope your Mother's health improves, keep plugging away and look behind the fixed manequin smiles and PR b.s.

Methinks Pddge works for a certain airline. I'm not sure what point your trying to make there Pddge. I've been travelling back and forth through Heathrow twice a month for 8 years and remember it quite clearly. My point was that It dosen't bother me that I have to wait an extra hour if it's for safety reasons, which I've had to do for years. What was your point exactly?

Sorry my mistake. I read Hotel as hospital in the paragraph above.

The point I was trying to make is that it dosent help security, the erroristytypes will just find a way round these things