I had travelled by air reasonably extensively over the previous 40 years on business and pleasure – high cost, medium cost, low cost and ‘Grace L. Ferguson Airline and Storm Door Company’ cost (for those who were brought up on a diet of Bob Newhart comedy). However, my experience in 2014 has to rate as the worst ever. I’m not a picky person, I don’t shout “compensation” at the first sniff of a problem, but the combined efforts of French Air Traffic Control, Ryannair, idiot drivers on the M11 and the French A7, French children’s sport promoters, weather forecasters, Marseilles Provence Airport (mp2) and UK Border Agency enrolled me into the Grumpy Old Man Brigade!
I fully subscribe to the fact that workers have the right to complain about erosion of their pay and conditions. I’m not so convinced that London Tube workers have the right to perpetuate jobs that are no longer viable (why maintain ‘Ticket Offices’ when few people actually need to purchase old-style tickets?). And although French Air Traffic Control workers, arguably, have the right to demonstrate their country’s ability to cut off their inhabitants’ robust noses to spite their own faces, trying to maintain a ludicrously uneconomic system of benefits and pensions, they do not have the right to disrupt the long-planned travel arrangements of the rest of Europe.
So it was that on Thursday 15 May 2014, my family and I attempted to travel to my niece’s wedding in Aix-en-Provence. It was not going to be easy, with an 18 month old bossy boots, a 4 year old going on 14 in the party plus, unknown to us at the time but obvious by my daughter’s abstinence, a little one in the oven, but the travelling skills of parents and grandparents would surely overcome any minor problems. Ah, but we hadn’t reckoned on the disruptive power of the French Air Traffic Controllers. Nor had we considered the total incompetence of Ryannair staff to deal with the unfolding situation in a way that approached reasonable (not even good) customer service. Two hours of queuing, bag dropping, waiting for boarding instructions, queuing and getting to the boarding gate – even seeing some potential fliers descending to the tarmac to board the plane that had just disgorged its load – did not prepare us, or any of the other stunned passengers, for “Flight cancelled!” I have never seen so many wide-eyed people standing in such silence, even if only for a few seconds, before the inevitable pandemonium.
“You’ll have to return to the desk to rebook,” from a reasonably disinterested suit, who had been pushed forward by the totally disinterested desk staff, did nothing to calm or instruct the increasingly restless crowd. There was no indication of how, where or when we were to accomplish the instruction, just “return to the desk”. Within seconds, I had an email message posted to my phone, which was demonstrably smarter than Ryannair staff, apologising for the cancellation of one of my flights, which, of course, was not Ryannair’s responsibility, and advising me that I could rebook on line. Rushing along with the crowd – still with no instructions – like lost animals in a wild stampede, our party broke up into an advance guard, who had no idea where she was going, a mediator, who was trying to gather all the party’s travel documents ready for the hassle of rebooking, and a sweeper, who was sweeping up the children and pushchair.
Blindly traversing long corridors, escalators, stairs and ‘staff only’ exits, I attempted the online rebooking – three seats only left on the next flight in the morning; not enough for the six of us. Flowing out into an already crowded check in area, I caught up with the advanced guard, who was near the front of a crowd that had already shifted from one designated desk to another.
“No, no, no. You don’t want E, you want F,” an obviously mis-titled Customer Services person bellowed. “Madam, you can’t go under that barrier!”
“Can’t I? You just watch me!” my Fiancée snarled has she regained her rightful place in the growing queue.
Why Ryannair, in their infinite wisdom, decided that rebooking 200 plus passengers, each taking 15 to 20 minutes to process, could be carried out by two individuals, is beyond me. Why Mr O’Lairy also decided that training his staff in customer relationships was a waste of money, however, did not surprise me. One of the dullards behind the desk responded to a French customer in front of us, “Yes sir, they did it deliberately just to annoy you.”
“No flights to Marseille until Saturday,” his colleague, Ms Disinterested advised.
“But the wedding is on Saturday!” I replied. No response. But after thinking about important things like the colour of her nails, what time her shift would end and how best she could annoy as many people in the shortest possible time, Ms Disinterested mumbled, “You can go to Toulon tomorrow.”
Fortunately, I am fully conversant with the geography of S France and, although the pre-hired mini-bus would be waiting at Marseille mp2, it was not going to be impossible to make suitable travel arrangements from Toulon Hyeres to our intended destination. My Sister lives near to the alternative aeroport, and my Son (who had managed to board his flight from Heathrow and wait a couple of hours on the taxi-way) may have been able to collect the pre-hired mini-bus from Marseille, drive to the hotel in Aix and collect us the next day. I quickly accepted the offer before the seats disappeared from the screen, but it then took another fifteen minutes of tapping, mouse manoeuvring, dawdling to the printer at the other end of the desk and scrawling across pieces of paper, before we received our rebooked flight details.
Then, something happened that I had never heard or seen before emanating from Mr O’Laughable’s organisation. In fact, I would surmise that when this becomes public, the desk clerk who uttered the amazing words has her days with the company well and truly numbered.
“It’s too late to check-in on-line, so you can get a printed version from the check-in desk at 9am….” I then heard three words that I thought had been banned from the Ryannair dictionary of authorised expressions, “… free of charge!” As it happened, I did check-in on-line that evening, but I was sorely tempted to wait until the next day, just for the exuberance of getting something out of Ryannair free of charge.
So, it only remained to pop back home in a taxi, rebook that morning’s taxi for the same again tomorrow and spend one more day in Essex, before jetting off for warmer climes. Pop back home? No sooner had the taxi entered the M11 that everything came to a grinding halt, as we noticed billowing smoke a little further down the road.
“Bet you’re glad this isn’t on a meter,” the once cheerful driver drearily intoned, as he pointed out the helicopter that had just landed ahead and the numerous ambulances, police cars, serious incident vehicles, and temporary screening wagons that were racing to the scene of the severe accident.
An hour later we were released from the blockage to continue the 35 minute journey, passing the devastation of a slewed horse box, three horses being walked around the motorway, one burned out car and one completely crushed car, having bounced it’s way down the carriageway and lodged at the front of a flat bed truck and trailer. Although very soon after we heard that a driver had been arrested on suspicion of dangerous driving, from my use of that part of the motorway, I would contend that the majority of road users on that stretch should be arrested for idiocy and the road designers for dangerous road design. Two exits in quick succession, the first having a slip road and the second a dedicated lane exit that immediately splits into two, is not a recipe for safe driving, especially when the users are likely to be first time visitors, foreign or both, on a tight time schedule and with conflicting advice from their passengers. What possessed the road designers to add another junction for Stansted rather than remodel the existing one will never be known, but I can imagine it had something to do with money, land ownership or both.
So, after an unplanned stopover at Epping with my daughter’s family, we tried again the next morning. Negotiating check-in, security, Wetherspoon’s and the boarding gate again were all an absolute doddle, compared with the previous day. Right up until the time the aircraft ‘rotated’ at 170mph, I was expecting a cancellation, but no, off we went into the cloudy skies above Essex, with not a hint of trouble.
I WILL NEVER FLY WITH RYANNAIR AGAIN!
My annoyance with French A7, French children’s sport promoters, weather forecasters, Marseilles Provence Airport (mp2) and UK Border Agency, will have to wait for Part 2.
Tim Oakley 
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