Consumer Group Wins Payout For Ryanair Overcharge

September 23, 2024 Madrid Metropolitan Business, spain news

The Spanish consumer rights association FACUA has succeeded in getting low budget airline Ryanair to refund one of its members after the carier had charged them for carrying her hand luggage.

Facua´s provocatively named Aerofraudes platform allows consumers who are members of the association to make a claim for any legal breaches made by airlines operating in Spain – which is exactly what this particular passenger, Águeda Fernández Martín, did.

Fernández Martín purchased flights last May to travel from her home city of Seville to Santiago de Compostela. The only option Ryanair gave her to take her hand luggage into the cabin was to select the “Priority and two pieces of hand luggage” option, which increased her basic fare by 13.20 euros (6.60 euros each way). In total, she paid 74.38 euros for her tickets.

At the end of June, Facua’s Seville branch contacted the Irish airline to demand a refund of the 13.20 euros overcharged. They accompanied the letter with information on the current regulation – article 97 of Law 48/1960, of 21 July, on Air Navigation – that obliges airlines to transport passengers’ hand luggage at no additional cost to the original price of the ticket.

Facua pointed out that this regulation stipulates that “the carrier shall be obliged to transport together with the passengers, and within the price of the ticket, the luggage with the weight limits, regardless of the number of packages, and volume set by the regulations.” Also that “the carrier shall be obliged to carry free of charge in the cabin, as hand luggage, the objects and packages which the passenger carries with them, including articles purchased in shops located in airports.”

On 27 August the airline replied to the customer by email, informing her that they were going to refund the 13.20 euros that she had been charged for her hand luggage.

The fine was based not only on the imposition of extra charges made to customers for carrying their hand luggage, but also on other grounds. These included extra charges for the reservation of an adjacent seat for accompanying minors or dependants, the vagueness in the pre-contractual information on the price of these airlines’ services, their refusal to take payment in cash for these extra charges and the 20-euro fee charged for printing boarding cards at check-in.

Last week the Minister for Social Rights, Consumer Affairs and Agenda 2030, Pablo Bustinduy, announced that in “the coming weeks” he will conclude the case against Ryanair, easyJet, Vueling and Volotea for which his department imposed a fine of 150 million euros for “abusive practices”, following the appeals lodged by the airlines.

After the fine was announced at the end of May the Spanish Airline Association (ALA) rejected this decision because it “will harm consumers” who do not need certain services. ALA estimated that around 50 million passengers who do not carry cabin luggage on board and only travel with hand luggage that fits under the seat “would not benefit from paying only for essential services, forcing them to contract services they do not use.”

These are the first fines imposed by the Spanish government’s own consumer authority since it took over sanctioning powers in May 2022 following a modification of the general law for consumer protection.