A County Durham-area family is out £350 after Ryanair declined to refund a cancelled Spanish holiday — because their son died 11 days before departure, not within the airline's 10-day bereavement window.
Tina McDermont, 45, and her husband were booked on a four-night trip from Newcastle to Alicante, due to fly on 30 August. On 19 August their 18-year-old son Billy died in an accident. McDermont contacted Ryanair's customer support team to cancel and request a refund, sending a copy of Billy's death certificate, hoping to put the money towards funeral costs.
The airline refused. Its policy allows passengers to apply for travel credit when a passenger on the booking — or an immediate family member, defined as a partner, parent or child — dies within 10 days of the scheduled departure. Billy died on day 11. McDermont has called the decision "inhuman" and "disgusting and petty", noting that a single day's difference would have changed the outcome. She is urging the airline to assess bereavement claims individually rather than apply a blanket cut-off, and says she will never fly with Ryanair again.
Ryanair has not budged. A spokesperson confirmed the death fell outside the 10-day period, so no travel credit was due, and pointed out that the family were given the paperwork needed to claim through their travel insurance instead — which is where the story offers a practical lesson for everyone else booking flights.
Three takeaways worth knowing before your next trip. First, most airlines do have bereavement or compassionate policies, but they're narrow, often limited to travel credit rather than cash, and come with strict time limits — check the small print when booking rather than assuming goodwill after the fact. Second, a death outside the airline's window doesn't necessarily mean losing the money: comprehensive travel insurance typically covers cancellation for the death of a close family member at any point before departure, which is exactly the route Ryanair directed this family towards. Third, booking directly with the airline, as this family did, at least keeps the claim process simple — the same scenario through a third-party site can add another layer of bureaucracy.
The case has resonated because it pits rigid terms and conditions against an obvious human situation. McDermont's argument is that a fixed 10-day rule can't account for sudden accidents, and that a company of Ryanair's size could afford to show flexibility in exceptional circumstances. Ryanair's position is equally clear: the policy exists, it was applied, and insurance is the correct fallback. For travellers, the uncomfortable reality is that the terms you clicked through at checkout will usually win — so a few minutes spent reading the cancellation clause, or adding a reasonably priced insurance policy at the time of booking, is the best protection against finding yourself on the wrong side of a deadline.