A woman says Ryanair ‘fooled’ passengers into thinking they were flying to Frankfurt, when they were actually being taken to an airport almost 80 miles away.
Bridget Brown, her partner and two friends, along with several other passengers booked flights to Germany to spend time at Frankfurt’s popular Christmas markets.
The 48-year-old said ‘it really obviously said Frankfurt’ on the website ‘then added at the side it said “Frankfurt-Hahn”. We didn’t think anything of it when we saw that’.
Bridget and her group arrived at Stansted airport on December 7 and when they looked for their flight on the board couldn’t see Frankfurt displayed, only Hahn.
One of the group searched Hahn on their phone and was shocked to see it was around 80 miles away from the city.
To travel by public transport it takes almost three hours to get to the markets in the centre, and with a car it’s around two hours.
Bridget, a midwife from St Albans, Hertfordshire, said: ‘We just didn’t understand how it had happened and thought this is going to be an absolute nightmare.
‘When we got on the plane, we overheard another couple say ‘we can’t believe we’re flying to this airport’ and then other people on the plane started realising we weren’t actually going to Frankfurt.
‘The poor girl sitting next to me burst into tears and started Googling where this place we were actually going to was.
‘We realised that literally everyone on the plane had made the same mistake.. Dozens of people were completely unaware we were flying into the middle of nowhere.’
Many assumed they were flying to Frankfurt Airport, which is just over seven miles from the city centre.
Bridget said once they landed at Hahn – which she described as a ‘shoebox’ airport resembling a ‘German military base’ – she and her group started frantically trying to work out how they would get to Frankfurt.
She said: ‘They had a train connection to Frankfurt which takes over three hours. People were trying to hire cars but they’d all sold out. There was an eight-seater taxi outside and he quoted us 350 Euros to get to Hahn.
‘I went back into the airport and picked up the first people walking out through passport control and asked if they wanted to share a cab to split the cost.
‘We had to fork out money that we were going to be using on presents and things like that.
‘People are just totally unaware that they’re going to the middle of nowhere. We thought it would be this really lovely day and ended up being this weekend of having to organise transfers and paying each other money.’
Bridget believes it’s ‘inaccurate’ for Ryanair to advertise Frankfurt as ‘Frankfurt-Hahn Airport’ when the site is hours away from the actual city
She said: ‘Ryanair should be saying Hahn, then in brackets Frankfurt. It should be advertised as a flight to Hahn, not Frankfurt, especially at this time of year when people are taking their loved ones away to the Christmas markets.
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‘Ryanair are fooling people into thinking they’re flying to Frankfurt for the Christmas markets. We were mis-sold something.’
Ryanair told the Metro any claim that Ryanair fooled Bridget is ‘false’.
‘This passenger booked a return flight from London Stansted to Frankfurt Hahn, and was flown from London Stansted to Frankfurt Hahn on 7 Dec last as booked.
‘The name of all Ryanair airports – including Frankfurt Hahn – are clearly stated on our website/app. It is the responsibility of the passenger to ensure they check the name of the destination airport they are choosing to fly to (and its whereabouts) before completing their booking.’
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