AN ELDERLY couple have told of their disgust after being charged £110 by Ryanair to print their tickets at the airport.
Pensioners Ruth and Peter Jaffe told the BBC they had to pay the hefty airport check-in fees after mistakenly downloading their return tickets instead of their outgoing ones.
Ryanair defended the fees as being in line with its policy, as the couple had failed to check in online for the correct flight.
However, the Jaffes, who are from Ealing, have been inundated with messages of support since news of their unexpected charges from the budget airline went viral.
In an interview with BC radio, Ruth, 79, told how she had thought she had successfully managed to print her two tickets the day before the couple's scheduled flight from Stansted Airport to Bergerac, France, last Friday.
It was only when she arrived at the airport that she realised she had mistakenly printed the wrong tickets.
"I was then told that I had to go to the Ryanair desk to get a boarding card, and there they charged me £55 per person. I was horrified," she said.
Her 80-year-old husband, Peter - who has a disability - recalled how they had no option but to pay, as they had people expecting them in France.
To add to their woes, the couple then had to pay an extra fee to sit next to each other.
A subsequent social media post from the couple's outraged daughter, directed at the budget airline and viewed more than 13 million times, stated: "£110 for 2 pieces of paper which took 1 minute. Shame on you."
The couple have since complained to Ryanair, but concede that they don't expect to receive anything back.
Ruth added: "I think they'll say it's in the small print and it was our fault. Which it was, but it was a genuine mistake."
Consumer rights expert Martyn James said: "It's deeply unfair to penalise people who made an innocent mistake."
