A holidaymaker took Ryanair to small claims court after they failed to give him compensation over a delayed flight following a trip to Benidorm - and won.
Rob O'Malley, 50, claimed the budget airline had lied about the reasoning for his plane home to the UK from Alicante Airport being held up.
He spent six months after the holiday in September last year chasing £220 in compensation, with the firm continually stalling, he says.
Ryanair's legal team eventually claimed the last minute change - which saw Rob and his party of eight friends waiting over four hours for their flight to Bristol - was down to issues surrounding Tropical Storm Hermine.
In a response seen by the Mirror, they said passengers can claim compensation if a flight is cancelled or delayed more than three hours - but not if “caused by extraordinary circumstances which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken”.
However, Rob did some digging and found the storm was off the west coast of Africa and had finished the day before the flight was due on September 25 2022.
It had resulted in heavy rain up to the Canary Islands - some 1,300 miles northeast of Benidorm.
"The whole thing was just absolutely appalling," he told the Mirror.
"They are prepared to take something as far as taking someone to court, just to really try to put people off getting their compensation, it was quite ridiculous."
In response to their initial submission, Rob, a business development manager, wrote to Ryanair's solicitors trying to get them to realise their "mistake", which he says they ignored.
"We ended up in court and the judge found in my favour," he said.
On March 28, he was awarded £220 compensation by Warwickshire County Court, as well as his court costs to be covered bringing the total to £516.
Rob described the defence document the airline's legal team provided as "very technical" and so he read the Air Traffic Control manual to see what some of the terms related to.
"I discovered that it was the code for not having enough cabin crew to operate the flight," he explained.
"Then they subsequently missed all the slots they'd been allocated. The documents also showed that they had planned to use a different plane but ended up sending it to Riga instead of Alicante - this plane was on time.
"Ryanair obviously assumed that I wasn't going to work out what all of their documents meant."
Rob said: "I submitted a response saying that every other plane was taking off, there was nothing to show that there was any tropical storm."
He described Ryanair as "very arrogant", claiming the firm's lawyer "basically backtracked when the judge criticised them".
"She said it was an air traffic management decision because the slots were moved. But the slots were moved because they hadn’t got enough staff. Even their documents showed they hadn’t got enough staff.
The court date had come after months of delays, with Ryanair initially coming up with "various" excuses, and putting up "barriers" to avoid having to pay compensation, said Rob.
He joined a Facebook group and says he began to see a pattern, but never assumed they would let it go all the way to court.
"They write a standard defence in the hope everyone will give up for what is only a couple of hundred quid," he said.
"But I just don’t give up on this stuff. I’m just a bit of a weirdo."
After seeing his success, Rob's friends are now going through the same process and he says they've been told the airline will fight them.
He said unlike, for example, making a complaint against wrongdoing by a bank, where the Financial Conduct Authority "will come down on you like a tonne of bricks", with air travel the Civil Aviation Authority "just really don’t get involved".
"You have to take it to court," he added.
Rob estimates the whole process in the end cost Ryanair around £2,000.
"They just work on a numbers game assuming that 99 percent of people would have given up by that stage," he said.
"This is a major issue for many people trying to claim their £220 compensation and these are the lengths to which Ryanair and other airlines are willing to stoop to stop these claims.
"It’s a good job I’m switched on but so many people get frightened off when they see solicitors getting involved."
Rob had flown out to the Spanish holiday hotspot with a group of pals to celebrate his 50th birthday.
Each paid around £500 for flights and accommodation combined.
Ryanair said it did not wish to comment when approached by the Mirror.
