Ryanair passengers charged £55 after website crash leaves them unable to check-in online

The airline’s servers went down after the launch of an early Black Friday sale

Ryanair's website was down on 19 November (Ryanair)

Some Ryanair customers faced airport check-in fees of £55 on Monday 19 November after the airline’s website and app crashed, leaving passengers unable to check-in online.

The site was down for several hours last night, and by 10.20pm was still not up and running.

Europe’s largest airline charges £55 per person per flight for checking in at the airport – often this means it costs more than the ticket itself.

Furious passengers vented their frustration online.

Twitter user TotallydubbedHD wrote: “Was charged £55/pp (on a Ryanair flight that cost £46/pp return). Customer service, both online and on the phone, refused to acknowledge the website being down and/or having the ability to check in online. Think that’s called scamming people for having a shoddy website Ryanair.”

Musician Emile Bernard‏ responded: “Can’t believe they have the guts to make you pay extra! I’m having the same problem, flight in a few hours and I can’t log in! Ryanair sort it out!”

Ryanair has said TotallydubbedHD's issue had nothing to do with the website outage, as he tweeted before the site crashed. The exact times the website was down, however, remain unclear.

Other customers said they would simply refuse to pay the fee should they be charged. Ryan Rolph-Tryka tweeted: “Ryanair great work, £55 fee for not checking in online... website crashes, app down and no way to check-in... safe to say I WILL NOT be paying upon check-in tomorrow if you try and charge me for it!!”

Others were concerned that, due to the website issues, they had been charged multiple times for flights without any booking confirmation to show for it.

“What’s going on?” wrote Zoe Dean. “I tried booking online via app last night as website down for maintenance. After two failures on app website OK so booked. This morning I have three pending payments, different amounts, no email, one booking ref! My seats are still on sale!”

Ryanair launched its early Black Friday sale on 19 November, which could have contributed to servers being overloaded by bargain hunters. Flight prices were slashed by £30, with plenty of routes available for under £5.

However, many customers noted that the website problems meant they could not book tickets at the promised prices – and when ryanair.com was back up and running, the cost had gone up.

Chris Lovell tweeted: “So Ryanair will you be honouring the prices on your website and app before they both crashed?”

Borja Martínez Vázquez‏ added: “Ryanair the user experience on your website is a nightmare. I have tried to buy flights even with two different cards and your payment gateway is not working. After several attempts the price has been increased €40... Of course, after that, I won’t buy it at all.”

Ryanair has downplayed the crash; a spokesperson told The Independent: “The website is working normally. There was a brief server issue earlier yesterday evening which was quickly resolved.”