An athlete who was due to compete in an ironman triathlon revealed how Ryanair lost his bike at Dublin Airport and the UK.
Tom Kennedy, 31, flew from Edinburgh to Nantes, France in the hopes of taking part in the competition last weekend. However, Tom's dreams were nearly shattered after he was told that the airline had lost his specialist equipment.
The Team GB athlete was told that the staff had originally failed to board his specialist bike, wetsuit and helmet onto the aircraft at Edinburgh Airport last Thursday. And to make matters worse, the engineer would experience the same issues at Dublin Airport two days later, the Daily Record reports.
Tom had trained for 12 months for the 70.3KM swim, run, and cycle race and was hoping his performance would allow him to qualify for future events. His mum, Sally, was told by Ryanair that would take seven days to locate the equipment.
After several phone calls, Sally, 60, said Ryanair said they would fly the bike to Dublin and transfer it to Nantes on time for the race but that never happened.
She said: "Nothing about this was straightforward. After being told the earliest they could get it here was next week, we then received a call to say it was being flown to Dublin and then onto Nante on Saturday morning.
"But Tom's Airtag showed it hadn't moved from Dublin after the flight had taken off and they confirmed it had once again not been transferred onto the plane.
"We couldn't believe it as we had actually started to believe it was coming. Thankfully after further calls they agreed to send it back to London and board it onto a later flight."
Tom was finally reunited with his bike just hours before the race began. Sally added: "He finally got it back on Saturday evening, just in time for it to be registered for the race on Sunday. They actually gave him an extension because of the circumstances.
"Tom performed brilliantly in the race. He achieved a personal best of four hours, 47 mins, 10 seconds. This is eight minutes less than his previous best. How phenomenal given the lack of training the last two days. What an athlete."
A Ryanair spokesperson said: “Ryanair operates over 3,300 daily flights across more than 230 destinations and leads the industry with fewest lost bags – 1 bag mishandled per almost 10,000 passengers.
"We have located this passenger’s lost baggage which is now being short shipped to Nantes.
"Ryanair apologises for any inconvenience caused as a result of this delay.”
