My husband flew back home to Alicante from Manchester T2 yesterday with Ryanair and was rather suprised by the large vertical banner ad on display at the exit of the Biza Duty Free shop.Being a regular air passenger on Ryanair, normally traveling between London Gatwick and Alicante I am aware of the strict hand luggage policy that I always adhere to - that or face the extortionate £40 excess charge for being over the weight or size dimensions. This is clearly conveyed when making your on-line booking and also when you print off your boarding pass.... with a big reminder and picture of a case with the acceptable hand luggage dimensions on your boarding pass. It is a known fact and advertised on Ryanair that any Duty Free purchases made MUST fit into your hand luggage allowance.
Once back home I logged onto the Biza website and found that they also have stores at Newcastle and East Midlands airport. I phoned both airports and spoke to someone at the Biza store to check whether this rule applied to their airports for Ryanair passengers. Different answers ..... East Midlands said yes but Newcastle said no! So where does the passenger stand ? Are all Ryanair passengers equal ? Obviously not ... those traveling from Manchester and East Midlands are exempt from the strict rules imposed by Mr O'Leary at Ryanair. So if you are a Ryanair passenger traveling from either of these airports and wish to increase your hand luggage allowance, purchase a tolberone and ask for a very big Biza bag to stuff all your other things into! I can just see the headlines in next weeks tabloids ... lorry highjacked on M6- a container of Biza carriers taken and now being sold on the black market at £5 each !
How does anyone know where they stand on the hand luggage rules now when traveling on Ryanair..... (I wonder whether someone at "Biza" has a family connection to the O'Leary's !)
On a separate note but still to do with Ryanair, the live flight information at Alicante seems to have disappeared for the airline! I logged onto Aena to check whether the flight was on time (it was actually just under 2 hours late taking off) but no information was available for ANY Ryanair flight. How odd - instead the following message comes up "Due to technical difficulties, flights by Ryanair are currently NOT included in our air real time flight data!" I wonder whether this is in retaliation by Aena, the airport operator for Mr O'Leary's refusal to pay for the sky bridges and threatening to withdraw 80% of Ryanair flights from Alicante airport !!!!
So if you are trying to check whether any visitors to Benidorm are arriving on time better hope that they are not on Ryanair as you will not be able to check the arrivals information online.
We will keep you updated with any more developments from your favorite, "not alway low cost" carrier.
