“I’m writing to ask for your help with a consumer issue involving Aer Lingus,” begins a mail from Mary. “This involves a request by me to Aer Lingus customer service on August 28th, 2025, to cancel return flights (due to depart on 1 September 2025) for one member of a party of four.”
Mary says that an “error was made by Aer Lingus processing this request, wherein they cancelled the wrong flights”.
And what exactly does that mean? Well, it means instead of cancelling the flights of the one person who was unable to travel, it cancelled the three flights of those who were able to travel.
When Mary discovered the mistake, she “contacted customer service again to request that the error be rectified, and ended up spending hours on the phone with various different customer service individuals”.
RM Block
All told she spoke with 11 different people from Aer Lingus customer service over four days. “I was assigned three different case numbers and was told on multiple occasions that a ‘supervisor’ would call me back within 24 hours, which never happened.”
One agent indicated she had a ‘technical issue’ and would have to ring me back in 10 minutes. I never received a call back
— Mary, Aer Lingus customer
Mary was told the flights “could not be reinstated, as an Aer Lingus travel voucher had already been issued to the wrong passengers. It was suggested that I either rebook the flights that had been cancelled by Aer Lingus in error at my own expense (€8,000 at that point) or to ‘try other airlines’. I experienced lengthy hold times, inconsistent information, dropped calls, and refusals to escalate. One agent indicated she had a ‘technical issue’ and would have to ring me back in 10 minutes. I never received a call back.”
Mary says this “reflects an extremely poor customer service system that failed to address and error made by Aer Lingus. This ordeal caused tremendous stress and uncertainty, just days before a long-awaited trip. I had to pay out of pocket for new flights with a different airline (over €1,000 extra) and travel two days later. Furthermore, a long-awaited family trip was cut short by three days and events that had been planned had to be cancelled.”
She reckons her experience “reflects a broader consumer issue that merits public attention. There is no way of contacting Aer Lingus in writing to raise this complaint or receiving a clear explanation of how this happened, and what safeguards will prevent it in the future.”
She says Aer Lingus offered her “reimbursement of the original flights over the phone two days after the departure date. This does not take into account additional expenses (including the additional €1,000 for alternative flights with Westjet). There has also not any explanation [of] why the process of getting the error rectified was so stressful.”
And speaking of stressful, we also heard from Fintan, whose daughter bought two return tickets to the US with a departure date of early next year.
“The booking in total was over €1,500. She entered her PTSB card details and verified the payment with certain digits from her password, and entered her code that was sent to her by PTSB. The page then returned to the Booking Payment page,” he writes.
However, “she received no ‘payment received’ email from Aer Lingus, which she found strange, so she checked the booking in her Aer Lingus app and the booking didn’t exist, but the money was taken out of her account”.
Fintan said he had heard this was “an ongoing issue on their website. When she rang Customer Care they said there is indeed a problem on their website and the money would be refunded, but in the meantime to rebook again straight away and it would definitely go through.”
He says that when his daughter “further investigated the matter, apparently one traveller on TikTok put up a post highlighting this issue up to six months ago, and a number of people in the comments said the same happened to them. She could not afford to be out of pocket to the tune of €1,500, never mind rebooking dates in question on the off-chance that the initial payment would be refunded.”
He advised her to phone a PTSB emergency number. She explained to a bank representative what had happened and was told the payment to Aer Lingus was processed and was “pending”. The PTSB rep “could not put a stop on the payment but it would be refunded into the account in five working days, at which time the flight prices may have increased or worse still no longer be available”.
Fintan says the only reason they had booked with Aer Lingus, as opposed to British Airways, whose tickets were a similar price, was “to support our local national airways carrier. She now has a nervous wait until Friday to see if her refund will be issued to her PTSB bank, and she will have to go through the stress of rebooking the entire trip, and hope that it hasn’t increased in price or sold out, but will definitely be considering booking with anyone other than our national airline.”
We can understand his disappointment, although we feel compelled to point out that Aer Lingus and BA have the same owners, and neither one is considered a flag-carrying national airline any more.
That is not to take away from his story, mind you.
We contacted Aer Lingus looking for its perspective on both of these stories.
“Aer Lingus sincerely apologies to Mary and Megan [Fintan’s daughter] for their recent experiences with us, which fell below our usual standards,” a spokeswoman said.
“We are pleased to have resolved these matters directly with our customers by offering Mary a full refund for the fare difference in her rebooking, and we also have offered Megan the opportunity to rebook with us at the original fare price. Our quality and training team is reviewing both cases to address the potential for future administrative or process errors.”
