News » Ryanair to impose “compensation levy”

[brooklynite]

Source: Business Traveller

The carrier says it will add a €2 fee to all bookings made from April 4, to compensate for costs suffered by “force majeure” incidents such as the volcanic ashcloud, strikes and snow closures.

The carrier says that it suffered costs of over €100 million over the last year, arising from from “flight cancellations, delays and providing right to care, compensation and legal expenses arising from more than 15,000 flight cancellations and over 2.4 million disrupted passengers”.

Ryanair says that the majority of these claims arose from three periods during which it was “prevented from flying by the failure/inaction of third parties”, these being:

* the Icelandic volcano airspace closures of April/May 2010
* the snow closures of many EU airports during November/December 2010
* over 15 days of national ATC strikes, primarily in Belgium, France, Germany and Spain in summer 2010, which caused repeated flight delays and cancellations.

Ryanair has named the new fee the “EU261 Compensation Levy”, referring to the EU regulation which requires carriers to provide customers with compensation and assistance in the event of delays and cancellations caused by incidents such as those listed above.

Read more: http://www.businesstraveller.com/news/ryanair-to-impose-a-compensation-levya

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Wait till the American carriers figure out that they can charge customers extra to pay customers for stranding them on the tarmac during delays...

[intaglio]

1. I can't be polite about Ryanair n/t

[regnaD kciN]

2. GREAT song about Ryanair...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPyl2tOaKxM :rofl:

[trof]

4. +1

[Psephos]

3. What's next? A fee to cover the cost of painting their logo on the tail?

It doesn't matter how they itemize, it costs $xx total to fly somewhere. If an airline's costs increase, then its fares must eventually increase. OK, we get it.

All that itemization does is make pricing annoying. Hard to see the upside in further pissing off customers beyond the major PITA that flying has become.