A 45-year-old British mother says Ryanair refused to refund her £350 flight after her 18-year-old son died in an accident, because his death fell just outside the airline's rigid 10-day bereavement policy.
Tina McDermont, a civil servant, had booked a four-day trip from Newcastle to Alicante, Spain, for herself and her husband, with a departure date of August 30. Then her son Billy died in an accident. He was 18. The family never boarded the flight, and McDermont turned to Ryanair's website to request a refund of the £350, roughly $467, she had paid for the booking.
What followed, as reported by the New York Post, was a bureaucratic loop that left McDermont without her money and without any explanation she found acceptable. Ryanair's bereavement policy grants travel credit only when an immediate family member dies within 10 days of a scheduled departure. Billy's death fell outside that window, by what McDermont described as a single day.
McDermont logged onto Ryanair's site to begin the refund process. The airline sent her a link requesting Billy's death certificate and repeatedly asked for the date of death. She provided the documentation. Then she called.
The answer was no. Billy had died more than 10 days before the August 30 flight, placing his death outside the bereavement window. Ryanair told McDermont to file a claim through her travel insurance instead.
McDermont described the experience in blunt terms in an interview with Kennedy News:
"It was like a slap in the face."
She said the online process itself wore her down. The system kept looping back to the date of death, the very detail that would disqualify her.
"I couldn't get any further forward because they kept requesting the date of death. It was really starting to agitate me."
McDermont contacted Ryanair a second time, hoping someone would reconsider. The airline stood by its policy. No refund. No travel credit. No exception.
The arithmetic stung. McDermont told Kennedy News that a difference of roughly 24 hours separated her from eligibility.
"If he'd died a day later, I would've got my money back."
She had planned to put the refund toward Billy's funeral costs. Instead, she got a form letter directing her elsewhere. McDermont called the policy a failure of basic compassion.
"It's a blanket policy, but it isn't human."
She argued the airline should evaluate bereavement claims individually rather than enforce an arbitrary cutoff.
"It should be done on a case-by-case basis."
McDermont insisted the fight was not primarily financial. She framed it as a matter of principle, and scale.
"It's not about the money. It's the principle. £350 for a huge company like Ryanair is chicken feed. They're greedy."
She vowed never to fly the carrier again and said she wanted her experience to serve as a warning to other families.
A Ryanair representative issued a statement defending the company's position without acknowledging any room for flexibility. The spokesperson confirmed the 10-day rule and said McDermont simply did not qualify.
"Ryanair's bereavement policy allows passengers to apply for travel credit where the death of an immediate family member occurs within 10 days of their scheduled flight departure."
The representative added:
"As this bereavement occurred outside of that period, this passenger was not entitled to travel credit."
Ryanair said it had provided McDermont with the paperwork she would need to file a claim through her travel insurance provider. Whether she had such coverage, and whether she pursued that route, remains unclear.
McDermont's case is not an isolated grievance. In 2024, a 36-year-old British woman named Anita Kozłowska faced a similar dispute after her sister died before a trip. Ryanair charged Kozłowska approximately $140 to amend the booking, not to cancel it, but simply to change it.
Kozłowska told BPM Media at the time:
"I just feel it is absolutely disgusting to be paying that much."
The outcome of Kozłowska's case, whether Ryanair reversed the charge or held firm, was not reported. But the pattern is the same: a grieving family member, a rigid policy, and no evident willingness by the airline to treat a death in the family as anything other than a scheduling problem.
McDermont did not stop at criticizing her own treatment. She called on Ryanair to overhaul its bereavement policy entirely, arguing that the loss of a child, at any point before a flight, should trigger a different response than a missed connection or a change of plans.
"Ryanair needs to change their policies. There needs to be a special circumstances clause for close relatives like children. Have a bit of heart and compassion."
Billy's death was sudden. McDermont described it as a massive shock. The specific circumstances of the accident have not been disclosed. What is known is that an 18-year-old died, his mother asked for $467 back from one of Europe's largest airlines, and the airline said the calendar did not cooperate.
A company that can move millions of passengers a year ought to be able to handle a mother's grief without hiding behind a 10-day stopwatch. When the policy matters more than the person, the policy is the problem.