Ryanair breaks silence after family barred from boarding flight to Dublin

Irish Daily Mirror

a day ago

Ryanair has issued a statement following a family's claims that they were barred from boarding a flight from London to Dublin and told they needed visas to enter Ireland.
Christina Finn and her husband Cameron had travelled from Belfast to London on Friday for a CBeebies event with their five-month-old son. However, on their return flight from London Stansted to Dublin with Ryanair, they were refused boarding.
The family had flown to London earlier that day using their driving licences as identification. Speaking to Belfast Live earlier this week, Christina explained that the trouble began when they were unable to check in online and were asked to pay a fine for checking in at the airport. Staff then requested to see their passports - which had expired.
She said: "My husband has an Irish passport and I have a British one which have both recently expired. With the baby due, we were waiting until he was born to renew them so that we could just do it at the same time. We informed the staff that we had flown over on our driving licences so he took them away and came back with a man who told us that because my husband has an expired Irish passport, he would be allowed on the flight to Dublin but as my passport was a British one they couldn't let me on the plane.
"The staff informed me that as a UK citizen I would need a visa to travel to Ireland as it is in the EU and I tried to explain to them that that wouldn't apply due to the Common Travel Area. I told him that we lived in Northern Ireland and he then questioned how I had a British passport and couldn't seem to understand that it was a pretty common thing for people to fly to Dublin then travel on to Belfast. He also said that we would need to have evidence that we had booked onward travel from Dublin to Belfast."
Christina added: "As I questioned it, he said that he was speaking to someone on the phone who told him that if they let us on the plane and if we arrived in Dublin we would be stopped at passport control and the airline would be fined between £500 (€589) and £1,000 (€1,179) for allowing me on the plane without a valid passport."
Responding to the incident in a statement on Tuesday evening, a Ryanair spokesperson said they were correct to deny the family from boarding under airline rules.
The spokesperson said: "Ryanair does not accept driving licenses as a valid travel document for travel between Ireland and the UK. Passengers must present a valid passport for travel, which these passengers did not, and were correctly denied boarding from this flight from London Stansted to Dublin."
An earlier statement from Ryanair added: "In accordance with Ryanair's T&C's, which these passengers agreed to at the time of booking, these passengers failed to check-in online before arriving at London Stansted Airport (5 June). Therefore, these passengers were correctly asked to pay the required airport check-in fee (£55 [€64] per passenger), however refused to do so, and became aggressive towards the agents at the check in desk at London Stansted Airport.
"All passengers travelling with Ryanair agree to check-in online before arriving at their departure airport and all passengers are sent an email reminding them to do so 24hrs before departure. These passengers were subsequently correctly denied boarding to this flight from London Stansted to Dublin (5 June) as these passengers' passports did not meet the requirements for travel as both passports had expired in 2024.
"It is each passenger's responsibility to ensure that their passport is valid for travel in line with the relevant State requirements at the time of travel. These requirements are clearly set out on Ryanair.com, and passengers are reminded with pop-up messages during booking.
"Passengers travelling between Ireland and the UK are required to carry a valid passport for travel. Therefore, as these passengers did not present a valid passport for this flight from London Stansted to Dublin Airport, they were correctly denied boarding."