Once upon a time, a very long time ago, or May 1998 if you want to be more precise, I took a flight with Ryanair from Birmingham to Dublin. It was, in fact, the first flight I had ever taken in my entire life and hence a rather exciting experience. A week later, I attempted to take my second ever flight from Dublin back to Birmingham, and it was here that the fun and games started.

My family and I arrived at Dublin airport in good time and searched for our flight on the departure boards. For some strange reason, it didn’t appear to be showing at the time at which we had expected it. Curious. Eventually, a bit unnerved, my mother went over the a customer information desk and enquired. Customer Services proceeded to deny point blank that our flight existed. My mother duly produced the tickets. Customer Services then clarified that our flight had indeed once existed, but had since been cancelled. These were the good old days when you had proper paper tickets and had to go to a travel agent to purchase them. The travel agent had not informed us that our flight had been cancelled, or perhaps more accurately, Ryanair had not informed the travel agent. The time/day of the flight had been randomly moved without us knowing, and thus we had missed it.

The prospect of being stranded in Dublin airport was not one that appealed, and after various arguments between my mother and Ryanair staff, we were booked onto a new flight. There followed a mad dash across the airport to try and make it, which culminated in us actually running out onto the runway, so lax was airport security in those days But ultimately we missed that flight too and had to sit around in the airport for many boring hours before Ryanair condescended to fly us home.

Over the past ten years, Ryanair has metamorphosed from a slightly dodgy airline which sold flights to Ireland slightly cheaper than Aer Lingus, to the incredibly dodgy European budget airline that it is today. A lot of things have changed, from the online check-in system to the staff’s desire to sell you scratch cards during the flight. It appears that some things, however, remain the same. (more…)