PLANE RIDICULOUS: Ryanair refuses gift voucher made out to ‘Mum Dad’

A BRITISH couple were unable to fly to their Spanish holiday home using a €115 Ryanair voucher because it was in the name of ‘Mum Dad.’

Kathryn and Richard Bolton, from Banbury, Oxfordshire, were told they could not use the voucher, bought for them by son Nick, 34, because the “names did not match” those on their passports.

But when insurance worker Karen, 60, called the budget airline to resolve the problem, she was told that the correct names should be ‘Dear Mum Dad.’

She told UK media: “The whole thing has been a ludicrous farce. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so annoying.”

The voucher was bought as a Christmas present from Nick, wife Amy and their two dogs Brian and Ernie.

He wrote ‘Dear Mum Dad’ in the space for the recipients’ names, and Kathryn and Richard, 59, who works at a print laminating company, tried to redeem it in April for a planned trip to their Costa Brava holiday flat near Girona.

Karen continued: “When I tried to buy them with the voucher it said ‘passenger name doesn’t match’. My husband thought I was being silly, so he tried it and it still wasn’t working.

“So we rang Ryanair – at 13p per minute – and finally a man said, ‘The name doesn’t match.’ I asked what the ‘correct’ name was, and he said, ‘Dear Mum Dad.’ I said that’s a salutation, not a name.”

The low-cost carrier eventually relented and said they will reissue the voucher.

Karen added: “To say it’s taken the shine off things is an understatement. They had our voucher information online and would have known straight away we were genuine customers, but they put us through all this rigmarole.”

A Ryanair official said: “The name on the voucher must match the name on the passport as per our terms and conditions.

“As a gesture of goodwill we have contacted the customer directly to resolve the issue.”

It comes as the Irish operator sparked outrage at London’s Stansted Airport this weekend, with hundreds of passengers up in arms over lengthy check-in queues.

Some feared missing their flights after branding the situation ‘an utter shambles,’ while the airport said cancellations due to bad weather earlier in the week haver triggered a bottleneck.