Ryanair mocks British Airways with 'Geography for Dummies' book after it flew to Edinburgh rather than Germany

‘Even we wouldn’t flog Edinburgh as Germany'

A Twitter row has broken out between Ryanair and British Airways after a BA flight from London to Dusseldorf mistakenly flew to Edinburgh.

The mix-up happened because the German pilots of a sub-contracted plane flew Sunday’s flight pattern on Monday.

Ryanair has offered to help the errant airline by sending a present: “Hey, @British_Airways, we have a present for you,” it wrote, next to a picture of the cover of the book Geography for Dummies.

The BA Twitter monitor responded: “Now, now. No one is perfect. Lolly.”

Ryanair responded: “True, Lolly! Even we wouldn’t flog Edinburgh as Germany,” with the hashtag #DusseldorfNorth.

At this point the travelling public intervened, with Julie El Taher tweeting: “Get a room you two. And a map.”

Pete Howard offered: “Nice to see @Ryanair and @British_Airways have something in common at last, by dropping [their] customers in a completely different place to where they have booked!”

C Weir tweeted simply: “Ballykelly army base/City of Derry airport **cough cough**” – a reference to an incident in 2006 when a Liverpool-City of Derry flight operated by Eirjet on behalf of Ryanair landed at a military airstrip rather than the airport serving Northern Ireland’s second city.

Ashley Hinton asked: “What everyone [wants] to know is if the detour counted towards Avios points.”

Meanwhile Eurocontrol has dismissed criticism that it should have spotted the error, saying: “We get 30k flight plans a day. If someone files for EGPH and then flies there, no eyebrows are elevated.”