I have two.
Our honeymoon. The RyanAir flight was delayed with no explanation by about 5-6 hours. By the time that we arrived to Austria after mid-night the last train headed toward our hotel had gone so we waited, on the first night of our honeymoon, at the train station until 4am when the first train of the morning was coming through. We promptly fell asleep on the train and woke up at 5:45am surrounded by commuters staring at us. We arrived at our hotel at about 6am and had to wait for a bit until check-in because the hotel wasn't properly opened at that time. What a way to start to honeymoon!
____________
Summer 2007. Also RyanAir. I was in Venice visiting a friend and her husband who were doing a short study abroad. I caught the RyanAir bus to the airport and found out upon arrival to the airport that the flight was canceled. I re-booked the flight for the next day, caught bus back to Venice and showed back up at my friend's rented apartment (after getting lost in Venice) to stay another night.
The next day I headed back to the airport again, but this time there was a traffic jam and the buses to the airport weren't running so I caught a train to the airport. After getting off the train I got a taxi to the airport. But had to wait for around 20 minutes because the taxi ranks weren't full and the taxis that were there were having to radio back to base asking for more taxis. Then the taxi drivers only wanted to take people who were actually together rather than piling people in so the people in line all started introducing themselves and bonding over the flight horror.
I get the airport, run up the stairs because I'm running a bit late after the train and taxi delays, and look up at the departure screens to find that the flight is again canceled. For the second day in a row. And all the flights are fully booked because well, it's summer and it's Italy. By now I've taken an extra two days off of work, I'm out of credit on my phone, and I can't stay with my friends another night because their stay in Venice is over and they left the same time I did for Rome.
Oh yeah, forgot to mention, Lloyds flagged my ATM card so I also didn't have any access to money. My husband couldn't call them to get my card working again because he wasn't me even though it was a joint account. My phone died when I tried to call Lloyds because it ran out of charge and there was nowhere to charge it.
All the hotels in the area of the airport are fully booked because of the missed flights. I have no money to get back to Venice and no way to get money. Great. Some guy about my age on the flight felt bad for me and had a place to stay as he'd been staying with friends so I crashed on his friend's couch back in Venice after the guy loaned me money for the bus ride back, dinner that night, and the bus ride to the airport again in the morning.
While I was gone my friend who was visiting from the US had arrived and my DH was having to take time off of work to deal with her because I couldn't be there. Work was upset because I took an extra two unplanned days off.
What was supposed to be a three day quick trip to see a friend almost doubled into a five day nightmare with RyanAir, staying in random people's apartments, and a huge mess with Lloyds bank.
When I called Lloyds to ask why they shut down my ATM card I was told that they do that occasionally as a security measure and there's no way to avoid it. It wasn't shut down because of irregular activity according to them but just for a random security check.
After these two appalling experiences with serve delays and cancellations with RyanAir I won't fly with them. I'm still very bitter.
