An English tourist has publicly denounced Ryanair's "complete lack of empathy" after wanting to travel with her mother to Lanzarote, who died before the trip, according to the news website MSN.
Sophie Taylor, as the tourist is called, planned this vacation to celebrate her mother's 60th birthday. To do so, she bought the tickets in October 2024, but Sharon died in August of this year, two months before they were to fly to the island.
The woman bought the tickets through Love Holidays to travel from Bristol on October 2nd, returning a week later on a Ryanair flight.
However, upon his mother's death, he decided to take the trip with his father, so he asked the companies if he could change the name on the tickets.
After the death of her mother, Taylor decided to fly with her father and asked the companies if she could change the name on the tickets. Love Holidays and Jet2Holidays waived the administrative fees for the name change, but Ryanair did not. Instead, they told her that she would have to pay 100 pounds (114 euros) to change the name to her father's.
Despite the tourist sending proof of her mother's death certificate, the airline responded with an automated message requesting payment.
In an interview with the BBC, Taylor said that "my whole world fell apart when I lost my mother, but being in this situation on top of everything else was just awful."
They also explained that for them, "Lanzarote, and specifically Puerto del Carmen, was a special place, a place we visited some 15 or 16 times, so the return for Sophie and me was full of mixed emotions."
Finally, the father decided not to cancel his wife's seat on the return flight and, instead, booked a separate seat on the flight for 52 pounds, about 59 euros.