This happened earlier this year, but has just now come to my attention:

Ryanair was flying vacationers to the Canary Islands – well, one Canary Island in particular – when a bad storm rolled in, so the plane diverted to another island. Then – it left. Stranding all 120 passengers.

One family had to fork over almost $600 for the hotel (apparently, lodgings are pretty pricey there), plus there was the cost of the ferry to get to the correct island.

Now, it’s true that if something like this occurs due to weather, the airline is not responsible for picking up the tab under European Union rules, but other airlines that ran into similar difficulty that day managed to put up their passengers.

What really burnt the toast of so many Ryanair passengers, though, was that there were no Ryanair personnel in sight at this strange airport, so there was no one to give them any sort of guidance at all.

Ryanair insists the passengers were given some sort of information on their options, but the passengers vehemently deny this. Well, as AirlineReporter blogger David Parker Brown says, flying on Ryanair is always a gamble, and adds, “The old saying ‘you get what you pay for,’ is quite accurate with Ryanair.”