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Ryanair cancelled a flight on a lightly scheduled route from Brussels, Belgium to Nantes, France and could not get my family on another Ryanair flight until 2 days later. I was told by the chat agent that I could submit my meal and accommodation expenses for reimbursement, but without any qualification of what reasonable meant. Nor does their own website offer guidance: https://www.ryanair.com/content/dam/ryanair/help-centre-pdfs/eu261-notices-v15/EU261%20for%20United%20Kingdom%20-%20EN.pdf

I feel my family stayed well within reasonable, but now Ryanair says that they will reimburse only €25 per person per day. To eat 3 healthy meals out at restaurants for €25 per day in Brussels seems very unreasonable. One could barely get 3 complete meals at fast food restaurants for that amount.

What have others experienced, both as your per day cost to eat out for 3 meals in a comparable city and what you've been reimbursed?

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    Is it really that difficult to eat out in Brussels for 25€/day? Web sites I have found, which estimate travel expenses in Brussels are not far away in their estimates when describing budget travelling. Checking the menu at a few cafés and restaurants seem to indicate that the prices are similar to here in Munich, where I live, and I would have no problem here to get healthy and decent 'food on the go' for 25€/day if I had to.
    – Tor-Einar Jarnbjo
    Commented Sep 28, 2023 at 7:01
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    What did you actually spend?
    – Traveller
    Commented Sep 28, 2023 at 15:09
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    A possible rule of thumb for ‘reasonable’ might be a) the daily amount you typically spend on food; b) the cost of a light breakfast pastries/baked goods, fruits, toast, coffee, a takeaway sandwich & drink lunch, a one course evening meal. It’s probably not ‘reasonable’ to expect expenses to cover 3 full meals a day in restaurants, or include alcoholic drinks, for example. As a comparison, the BA website says ‘we won’t reimburse any unreasonable expenses’ but doesn’t define further, while Citizens Advice says ‘…you are unlikely to get money back for alcohol, expensive meals or luxury hotels’
    – Traveller
    Commented Oct 1, 2023 at 23:13
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    And exactly because you could eat out for that amount, that is what airlines consider reasonable. The intention behind the compensation is that you should not starve while waiting for your new departure. The compensation is not supposed to finance a continued high-class holiday. The prices you quote must be from a rather expensive restaurant. At Tonton Garby (rated 4,8 on Google Maps and clearly a decent place) you could have had a baguette with cheese, tomato and salad and a fresh orange juice for 5,50€. That is likely a comparable amount of food as the french toast and juice you paid 20€ for
    – Tor-Einar Jarnbjo
    Commented Oct 4, 2023 at 11:24
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    @pieguy It's well-established that alcohol is NOT reimbursed
    – Crazydre
    Commented Jul 20 at 18:30

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"reasonable expenses" is very ambiguous. Having worked in the airline business at an airport for almost 20 years, I would not expect any airline to consider it "reasonable" to pay for three full meals at a restaurant. Look at the value of the meal vouchers they issue at airports. At American, breakfast is $8 for breakfast and $12 for lunch and dinner. Although this is a bit more than 25 euros, you can see that it is still far from enough for a proper three meals at a casual restaurant. The instances where at American we issued meal vouchers for three meals were very few, even during 24-hour delays, as the threshold to issue a meal voucher was at least three hours.

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    EC261... The coupons are not relevant; SAS hands out a 10 EUR voucher for 2 hr delays, yet I've had no problems getting a real dinner at airport price (30EUR) reimbursed for same delays with SAS. In Norway I'd accept the government meal reimbursement rate, which is 93 EUR for Brussel...
    – vidarlo
    Commented Jul 21 at 7:53

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