A writer who left her laptop on a Ryanair flight from Dublin to London may now need to travel to Romania to reclaim it.
Susan Connolly has been locked in a dispute over the return of the device with the low-cost airline after leaving it onboard a Ryanair aircraft at Stansted airport in April.
After reporting her missing laptop to the airline at the London terminal, the 31-year-old was told the aircraft she had flown would shortly be travelling to Bucharest airport – leaving no time to recheck the cabin.
As she was sitting in the emergency exit row, Connolly had placed her laptop in an overhead locker and had only realised it was missing when she was travelling on a shuttle bus from the aircraft to the airport, she told The Sun.
Connolly later received an email from Bucharest airport confirming it had her device and gave permission to have it sent back to her.
“Bucharest Airport said they could send it back via a Ryanair plane to Stansted but I would have to give notice that I understood it might get damaged,” she told the newspaper.
Three months later, and after calling Bucharest, Connolly was told that by staff that Ryanair had refused to put the laptop on a plane or post it to her, according to The Sun.
“The only option I had was either to fly there myself or to make a friend in Bucharest who I can nominate go and pick up my laptop, which to me seems ridiculous,” Connolly said. “They know where it is, they know it’s mine, I don’t understand why they can’t arrange for me to get it back.”
After “numerous” calls to the airline, Connolly has now taken to Twitter to publicise her complaint.
“Something that has been lovely is that a large number of people have reached out to me as they will be travelling through Bucharest and want to help,” Connolly continued. “I think what is most frustrating about it is you hear all this stuff about Ryanair and how they’re horrible to fly on, but I actually quite like flying on Ryanair.”
According to the newspaper, Ryanair denies it has been contacted by Connolly about the laptop with a spokesperson adding: “Ryanair does not accept any liability for customers’ hand baggage, as it is each individual customer’s responsibility to ensure that they carry all of their belongings with them when leaving the airport or aircraft.
“The Lost Property Office in the relevant airport may be able to assist with locating misplaced hand luggage.
“Our customer service team has no record of any correspondence with the customer in question, and the matter has since been resolved.”