An athlete from Scotland due to compete in a gruelling Ironman Triathlon event in France has opened up about his experience with Ryanair, who lost his €10,000 bike in both Dublin and the UK prior to the race.
Tom Kennedy was en route from Edinburgh to Nantes in France in the hopes of competing over the weekend, however, the engineer was left gutted after claiming the low-cost airline told him his specialist equipment, including his bike, wetsuit and helmet, were not loaded onto the flight.
To make matters worse for the 31-year-old Team GB athlete from Stirling, he would also experience the same issue at Dublin Airport two days later, the Daily Record reports.
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The athlete has trained for a whopping 12 months for the intensive 70.3-kilometre swim, run and cycle, something he hoped would help him qualify for future events.
Sally, his mum, alleged to the Daily Record that the family were left quite furious after Ryanair said there was not enough staff to look after the bike.
Retired headteacher Sally claimed: "The bike had an Airtag on it so we know it is still in Edinburgh. Ryanair told us they have no way of getting the bike onto another flight today because they don't have any staff in Edinburgh to look for it.”
Following a swath of phone calls to the budget airline, 60-year-old Sally said Ryanair confirmed they would be able to fly the bike to Dublin and then have it transferred to Nantes on time for the race, however she claimed that never happened.
She said: "Nothing about this was straightforward. After being told the earliest they could get it here was next week, we then received a call to say it was being flown to Dublin and then to Nantes on Saturday morning.
"But Tom's Airtag showed it hadn't moved from Dublin after the flight had taken off and they confirmed it had once again not been transferred onto the plane.
"We couldn't believe it as we had actually started to believe it was coming. Thankfully after further calls they agreed to send it back to London and board it onto a later flight."
Fortunately, Tom had his bike returned to him in the nick of time for the race, Sally said: "He finally got it back on Saturday evening, just in time for it to be registered for the race on Sunday. They actually gave him an extension because of the circumstances.
"Tom performed brilliantly in the race. He achieved a personal best of four hours, 47 mins, 10 seconds. This is eight minutes less than his previous best. How phenomenal given the lack of training the last two days. What an athlete."
In a statement, a Ryanair spokesperson explained: “Ryanair operates over 3,300 daily flights across more than 230 destinations and leads the industry with fewest lost bags – one bag mishandled per almost 10,000 passengers.
"We have located this passenger’s lost baggage which is now being short-shipped to Nantes. Ryanair apologises for any inconvenience caused as a result of this delay.”
