Ryanair pledges to refund police after water row
* Ryanair has said it will refund police for emergency supplies provided to passengers
MARTIN WILLIAMS
26 Jun 2010
The budget airline Ryanair has said it will refund police who *provided emergency water and chocolate to passengers when a plane was stranded on the runway for six hours.
Strathclyde Police paid out £250 for refreshments for the 160 passengers stuck on the Ryanair plane because the crew would not open the in-flight stores.
The aircraft was stranded at Prestwick Airport due to a French air-traffic-control strike.
Ryanair told The Herald that the crew could not give the passengers food and drink because *customs rules forbade them from breaking the seals of the on-board bars while on the ground.
But HM Revenue and Customs have denied their rules prevent passengers getting refreshments in such circumstances.
It was confirmed that regulations by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) prevented any of the four cabin crew leaving the aircraft while it was on the runway waiting for a take-off slot. Ryanair had only the minimum number of staff for the flight, and CAA rules require at least one cabin-crew member for every 50 people.
Passengers became *increasingly angry as crew refused to open refreshment trolleys on the aircraft, which had been due to leave at 2pm on Thursday but eventually left shortly before 8pm.
And their anger turned to rage when staff were seen drinking, and water was apparently brought on board for the pilot.
Some wanted to leave the fully-laden plane – but were refused as this could have meant cancelling the flight, the airline said.
When police became involved, officers bought Mars bars, Double Deckers and water at the force’s expense and brought them on board.
Chief Superintendent Bill Fitzpatrick, the divisional commander for Ayrshire police, said he thought the expenditure was an appropriate use of public money.
But Ryanair has said it will refund the costs of the refreshments, which it says were given out as a result of “the repeated and unjustified strike action of overpaid French air-traffic-*control workers”.
The complaints about the flight come just weeks after Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary attempted to avoid payouts for flights disrupted by the Icelandic volcanic-ash cloud.
Ryanair’s Daniel de Carvalho defended the airline’s actions. He said the crew were merely waiting for clearance to fly, and insisted they could do nothing about the provision of refreshments to passengers. “The moment the crew didn’t get the first take-off authorisation due to the strike, they had two options: keep asking for a slot or cancel the flight”, he said.
“But we can see there was a happy ending for the passengers involved because at the end of the day everyone was happy they reached Spain.
“They are all at the beach while we are not. They could have been at home now if we cancelled the flight.”
Ryanair acknowledged there was “a discomfort” of being on the ground without access to food and drink.
But De Carvalho added: “The problem is that the moment you break the seals of the bars, you break the law. Customs forbids this. You can’t open the trolleys on the ground.”
However, a Customs spokesman said the aircraft stores could in fact have been opened once passengers had boarded.
“Whether an airline chooses to start serving food and drink from the bar boxes at this time is a *commercial decision,” the spokesman said. “The issue for us is where you have bonded stuff such as alcohol, but water or orange wouldn’t be a problem from a Customs point of view.”
Meanwhile, some 110,000 travellers will fly out from Glasgow Airport this weekend at the start of the big summer getaway.
The airport handled 33,000 passengers yesterday – its busiest day of the year so far.
Airport bosses said check-in desks were “buzzing” for the start of the school holidays. The most popular sunshine destinations were Palma, Tenerife, Alicante and Dalaman.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/...es-to-refund-police-after-water-row-1.1037345