on the 29th July this year me and my wife were due to fly back from Forli Airport in Italy with Ryanair to Stanstead.

The flight was due to leave at 10:30pm but at 1 minute to 10:00pm the flight was cancelled!

There were no representatives from Ryanair at the airport, just Italian Airport staff (Airport closes after the last flight at 10:30 and re-opens in the morning) and all they were interested in doing was get us to collect our luggage and get out of the airport, with no offer of help or information.

I was told that the two Ryanair flights the following day were full and to try and get a flight from another airport!

I managed to get our hire car back so that we could actually drive somewhere to stay for the night.

The following morning I managed to get flights re-booked with Ryanair through Pisa airport for that night (24 hours delay) and got back to the UK a day late.

I wrote to Ryanair to claim expenses (compensation under EU Regulations) but have received "Outside our control" letter back from them.

I have written back bringing in the issue of Failed Duty of Care etc, etc, but still no luck!

I want to take the next step of going to court (Moneyclaim Online) and could really do with some help in the wording of the claim from anyone who maybe knows how to proceed, or who has gone through the process themselves.

Pleeeeeeese Help

You might struggle with issuing proceedings against Ryanair through moneyclaim as you will need an address to serve proceedings against them within England and Wales.

You should write to the Commission for Aviation Regulation, 3rd Floor, Alexandra House, Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin who are responsible for the enforcement of EU directive 261/2004 in Ireland but I doubt this will yield anything.

Good Luck

But Ryanair have the Head of Customer Services at Satallite 3 at Stanstead Airport, so I should surely be able to serve the notice there?

You could give it a go but be sure that it is actually an address for Ryanair and not one of its many handling agents.

You can still start action against them using old fashioned paper in your local court.

You can do a search through HMRC for the registered office of Ryan Air and go from there.

Regards

Mailman

First you need to find out why the flight was cancelled. If it really was outside of their control then there is not a lot you can do unfortunatly.

Even if they can show something was outside their control...dont just take their word for it.

In a case (last year?) Easyjet said aicraft x was cancelled because of technical difficulties outside its control. Only problem was that aircraft x wasnt the aircraft the passenger was flying on!

Sometimes the only way to get to the bottom of something is to have it tested through the courts.

Mailman

Don't know if you are still pursuing this, as your post is a bit older now, but I have just successfully sued Easy Jet for compensation as they cancelled our flight in July and didn't tell us until we got to the Airport (they forgot to tell some of the passengers so we showed up at the airport)

Pretty much the same story, didn't want to know and didn't care. Cancellation was due to operational reasons , we could only fly three days later as all other flights were fully booked. This cut our summer holiday short by three days

You need to be aware that "out of our control" as Ryan Air said, may not be good enough as per the EU regulation. The reasons must be "extraordinary" (war, extreme weather, civil unrest) so a court case might test this and they have to prove this beyond any doubt

In our case we asked compensation for four passengers plus all costs and expenses incurred, bill came to just under £1000.-

We filed at our local court, Easy Jet decided not to defend and hence got judgement by default. They have been ordered to pay us the full amount plus interest

Somtimes it is just worth to go for it and not let them mess you around like this