Denied boarding by Ryan Air even though my passport is visa-free to the destination

Question

In the check in counter at Ciampino airport in Rome, I was denied boarding, as the Ryanair staff kept asking me to show an Irish visa. But, Malaysian passport holders actually do not need a visa to go to Ireland. I tried to explain this to her and asked her to check, but she didn’t want to check.

She refused to talk to me and asked for the next person in line. So, I was waiting at the check in counter until I missed my flight. After I missed my flight, I explained everything to the supervisor of Ryanair. After they talked to the staff who made that decision, they realised that the staff had made a mistake.

So they offered me a free ticket to go back to Ireland; however, a flight was only available two days later, which meant that I needed to spend extra money for my accommodations and another PCR test in Rome. They denied to pay for my accommodation and PCR test, which cost me more than 100 euros.

I ended up getting a free ticket to Valencia for my partner but finally I still needed to do another PCR. They denied to pay for me for those consequences.

Can I get compensation for these expenses, as per the EU passenger rights charter?

Answer 1

Under regulation EC 261/2004, if you are denied boarding you are entitled to three things (see also Europa.eu):

• Compensation
• The right to chose between reimbursement, re-routing or rebooking
• Assistance

Assistance does cover accomodation but not PCR tests (it was written before the pandemic and doesn't cover visa fees either). The flight you accepted would seem to fall under the second bullet point but accepting that doesn't impact your right to compensation. That much is clear and relatively straightforward even if airlines are known to make difficulties to actually apply the rules.

The key question is whether EC 261 applies at all. It contains the following definition for “denied boarding”:

(j) "denied boarding" means a refusal to carry passengers on a flight, although they have presented themselves for boarding under the conditions laid down in Article 3(2), except where there are reasonable grounds to deny them boarding, such as reasons of health, safety or security, or inadequate travel documentation;

You did, in fact, have adequate travel documentation (and they accepted that fact) so I would conclude that you were denied boarding under that definition.

Concretely that means you are at least entitled to €400 (compensation for a flight over 1500 km).