Ryanair - they really are the pits of an excuse for an airline! Why? Read below:
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Ryanair charged distraught surgeon £160 to change his flight home - after learning his entire family had died in a house fire
Dr Muhammad Taufiq Sattar had a flight booked from Dublin to Leicester
He tried to change flight after police said his family may have died in a fire
But Ryanair insisted on charging him £158 to get on an earlier flight
His wife Shehnila Taufiq, 47, and her children Jamal, 15, Bilal, 17, and Zainab,19, had been killed in a house fire last Friday
Ryanair offered its sincere condolences and a full refund to Dr Sattar
A teenager has been charged with murder in relation to the deaths
Surgeon Muhammad Taufiq Sattar had to pay nearly £160 to change his regular evening Ryanair flight to the UK to an earlier only moments after he was told it was likely his family were dead. The 52-year-old flew over to see his family in Leicester almost every week and had his return ticket booked to travel last Friday as usual. But after being woken and told at 3am last Friday that his family’s house was on fire, he immediately changed his plans deciding he needed to get over to the UK as soon as possible.
Arriving in Dublin Airport at around 5.30am, and just moments after Leicester Police had confirmed by phone that no member of his family had managed to escape the blaze, he approached the Ryanair check-in desk to see if he could change his ticket.
Distraught, and with tears streaming down his face, he explained why he had to change his flight from 9.40pm to East Midlands Airport in Leicester later in the day so he could catch the 6.30am flight to Birmingham instead. But he was told he would have to buy a new ticket.
The stunned neurosurgeon produced his credit card and was promptly charged €187.46 - approximately £158 - for a one-way ticket to Birmingham.
In his first interview since returning to his west Dublin home in Castleknock on Wednesday night, he told the Irish Daily Mail: ‘I don’t want to make a big deal about it but it did shock me. I really did not expect them to charge me.
‘I thought, given the circumstances, they might just let me transfer flights, as I had already paid for a return fare.’
Last night, Ryanair issued a brief statement after receiving questions about the matter from the Irish Daily Mail.
