Ryanair and the Irish Daily Mail

The Press Ombudsman has decided to uphold a complaint by Ryanair about the Irish Daily Mail under Principle 1 (Truth and Accuracy) of the Code of Practice for Newspapers and Magazines on the grounds that the article concerned was significantly distorted.

The article, published on 22 February 2014, and headlined “Mutiny at the airport”, reported on  events at Stansted Airport aboard a Ryanair flight to Portugal which was delayed for  a number of hours.    The article, based in part on photographic and video evidence taken by passengers,  highlighted complaints expressed by the passengers, including allegations that they had been left for hours without food or drink, that the flight crew had refused to allow  them  to leave the aircraft, and that requests to turn on the air conditioning had been refused.

Ryanair complained, through its solicitors, that the article was significantly inaccurate and distorted, and failed to communicate the fact that the captain of the aircraft made every effort to lawfully disembark the passengers.  It also complained  that a number of statements in the article,  including a statement that passengers were left for hours without food or drink and that the flight crew refused to allow passengers leave the plane, were inaccurate.

The newspaper responded that it had reported on the situation and on the unhappiness of passengers as represented in the video and had done so accurately, and that the article contained detailed statements from the complainants and the landing agents, setting out their views on what took place. It did not accept that the article had criticised Ryanair for something which was someone else’s fault.

On the  basis of the evidence available to him, the Press Ombudsman concluded that the article, while accurately reporting passengers’ frustration and anger at not  being allowed disembark from the plane,  had given insufficient weight to the reasonable explanations by the complainant and others about the events concerned and about what had happened, when it had happened, why it happened, and who was responsible, and had for these reasons been sufficiently  distorted to warrant a decision that the article was, in this respect, a breach of Principle 1.  

5 June 2014

The Newspaper appealed the decision of the Press Ombudsman to the Press Council of Ireland.