Ryanair is going after another disruptive passenger in the courts with the low-cost carrier’s lawyers filing a €3,000 civil lawsuit against a customer who allegedly forced the pilots to divert a plane so that he could be hauled off by the local police.
This is the second civil lawsuit that the Dublin-based carrier is pursuing against one of its passengers as it embarks on a high-profile campaign to stamp out unruly and disruptive behavior aboard its planes.
In the latest case, Ryanair claims the man’s “inexcusable behavior” during a January 9 flight from Berlin to Marrakesh left the pilots with no alternative but to divert to Seville Airport in southwest Spain so that he could be removed.
The airline, the largest in Europe by passenger numbers, said 170 passengers onboard flight FR-5474 were unnecessarily delayed by the actions of the man while local authorities escorted him off the plane and the aircraft was refueled.
“It is unacceptable that passengers are suffering unnecessary disruption as a result of one unruly passenger’s behavior,” slammed a Ryanair spokesperson.
“Yet this was regrettably the case for passengers on this flight from Berlin to Marrakesh in January, which was forced to divert to Seville as a result of an individual passenger’s disruptive behavior, causing €3,000 in damages.”
The civil case has been filed in Poland as that is where the man lives, although Ryanair is also pushing Spain’s Guardia Civil to bring criminal charges against the passenger.
Ryanair is also suing another alleged unruly passenger for €15,000 in an Irish court after a flight from Dublin to Lanzarote was forced to divert to Portugal due to the man’s disruptive behavior.
In that case, Ryanair incurred much larger costs because the pilots and cabin crew ran out of legal hours to continue working so the airline had to find hotel rooms for all the passengers to stay in overnight.
Ryanair says it spent €7,000 on hotel rooms for the 160 passengers and six crew members, along with €1,800 for a replacement crew, €2,500 in airport landing and handling fees, €800 in excess fuel payments.
The airline is also seeking €750 from the passenger in lost inflight sales from food and drink that went to waste.
Late last month, Ryanair praised a court in Malta which slapped an unruly passenger with a €2,000 fine for smoking on a recent flight from Cologne and refusing to comply with crew member instructions.
In another case, Ryanair is bringing a private criminal prosecution against a passenger who delayed the departure of a domestic flight from Lanzarote after the passenger took someone else’s seat and then became verbally abusive towards the cabin crew.
Airlines need to have a method to “lock down” a passenger physically to a seat so they can’t get up and also a muzzle for the mouth so that will quiet them down, that way they can avoid a costly diversion. I know there are probably all kinds of legal issues that would prevent this plus it would force the flight crew to take a strong arm approach and that could bring up insurance issues as well.
I don’t much like Ryanair, but I fully support these measures. Why should these horrible people get away with disrupting everyone else, and why should we, the flying public, pay for them through increased airfares?