A group of very unhappy Ryanair passengers had to share hotel rooms with strangers after their flight was cancelled in Spain on Sunday.
Maria Jose Diaz was one of the passengers who found themselves being asked to find a buddy to share a room with for the night.
“It was shocking,” said Maria when describing the moment she found out that she would have to spend the night with a complete stranger.
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“We all got very angry. We were very tired,” she said.
Maria was queueing to board her 10pm flight from Santander to Dublin, which had already been delayed by two hours, when she and the other passengers were told that the flight had been cancelled.
“That was at about midnight or half past 12,” Maria said. “They told us it was difficult to find accommodation because it was so last-minute.”
The passengers were then broken up into groups and taken to three different hotels in the Spanish city. Upon arrival, Maria’s group found out that the airline had not booked enough rooms for all of them.
They were asked to form two groups at reception, those who were travelling with other people and those who were one their own.
“I was last in the queue so we were panicking. So, I asked the girl who was before me if she wanted to share a room and she said that was fine.”
“They said they had only booked 15 rooms for all of us but we were more 15 than people. We were, at that stage, very tired.” Maria was told that the hotel did in fact have enough available rooms but that Ryanair had only booked 15 twin rooms for all of them.
“We were shocked,” she said. “I knew that this was not the right procedure.” The twin room Maria shared with another woman had two beds pushed together with separate bedsheets.
“They could be separated but we were very tired so we just left the beds together,” she said. She says she was lucky to be sharing with a nice woman but wonders what could have happened if things had been different.
In the end, the travellers were given seats on another flight at 11am the following day.
In a statement about the situation, Ryanair told The Irish Mirror that asking customers to share accommodation was not company policy and that “on this occasion there was an error between the hotel provider and the airport handling agent who requested the rooms.”
“Ryanair was unaware that this passenger was asked to share a room with another passenger and had we been aware we would have sourced alternative accommodation, or had the passenger sourced their own accommodation, we would have reimbursed their expenses,” the statement said.
“We sincerely regret the inconvenience caused to this passenger and a member of our customer service team will contact them directly.”
“Today, I received a call from Ryanair apologising about this,” said Maria.
When she asked about receiving compensation, Maria said “the girl got a bit nervous and said, I’m sorry, I was just told to call and apologise.”
“I said thank you very much, because I actually think that that’s nice, but I also would like to hear about the compensation.”
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