A six-year-old boy was left in tears after an “IT glitch” meant someone else was already sitting in his pre-booked seat by the window on a recent flight.
Ryan Bandley’s mother, Addie, took care of her “highly reactive” son, who suffers from flying, booking a window seat, which she said helps keep him calm.
Bandley had booked tickets for the late August trip on a budget Airline Ryanair’s Polish subsidiary Buzz.
The family was traveling from Budapest to Manchester after a vacation, before heading to their home in Stoke-on-Trent.
When Mrs. Bandley boarded the plane, she soon saw a woman sitting in the seat she had reserved for Ryan. When I asked the other passenger what was wrong, it appeared that the woman had also been booked into the same window seat by Ryanair.
“Ryan loves to sit by the window,” Bandley said. woman. “It calms him down a bit and he likes to lean his head against the wall.”
She asked if the woman would consider moving for her son but she refused.
Ryan was assigned a seat by cabin crew, but his mother says he was left in tears and apprehension throughout the nearly three-hour flight.
“Ryan was very upset and worried and cried,” she says. He did not understand how this could happen. We sat apart and it was really stressful.”
“My poor baby was crying. People gave him candy and they were very kind,” she added.
She says she paid extra for three separate reservations of pre-booked seats, at a cost of between £15-30, because she knew Ryanair could separate families if they did not reserve seats.
“How could something like this happen?” She said.
Initially, Ryanair reached out to the family saying that Ryana had been replaced by an adult for the window seat because he was in the exit row; Something that Bandley refutes.
In the end, Bandley says Ryanair blamed a “computer glitch” for the confusion, and said it refunded the cost of the reservation.
A Ryanair spokesperson said: “The Buzz passenger seat was not sold twice; this misunderstanding was the result of an isolated IT glitch. Unfortunately, because the flight was fully booked, there were no other window seats available.
Buzz regrets the inconvenience caused to Ms. Bandli and a member of the customer service team contacted them directly.
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