Boules is a gentle game, and its players are generally an amiable bunch. It’s hard to imagine the average boules team hijacking an aircraft and demanding to be flown to Pyongyang.
Yet their equipment — heavy, 3in steel balls — could be dangerous in the wrong hands.
So, when reader Jim Harrison, a member of the Welsh team Monkstone Monarchs, was arranging an away game in Limoges, he was careful to check that Ryanair would allow his team to carry their boulesin their hand luggage.
The airline’s conditions of carriage list more than 30 items of sporting equipment that you can’t take into the cabin. These include rifles, javelins and throwing stars (obviously), but not, at the time, boules. So Jim called Ryanair customer services to make sure. They told him that it was fine to take them on board, and the team flew out from Bristol to Limoges with theballs tucked in their hand luggage, without any problems.
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On the return journey, however, the team were told by Ryanair staff that this was most certainly not OK, and that the bouleshad to be checked into the hold — at a cost of €50 (£37) per set, more than they cost to buy.
They were also told that the airline would not be able to keep the boulesfor collection by a friend who lived in the area. “By this time, the gate was almost closing, so we had to dump five sets,” Jim says.
He contacted the airline on his return and was initially told that he had a reasonable complaint, as he had sought advice in advance. When he was passed through to a manager, however, Jim was told that dangerous items of any kind could not be carried.
The issue here is not whether boulesmay or may not be considered dangerous — they clearly could be — but about the advice that an airline’s customer service staff provide to its passengers.
To give Ryanair credit, as soon as I intervened, it held up its hands to the problem. Someone at Limoges airport must have safely stored the boules, because the airline found them and has now agreed to send all five sets back to Jim at its own expense.
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Having boned up on our boulesscoring, we make that five points to the Monarchs, zero to Ryanair. Result.
For other sportsmen and women who want to take equipment abroad, it is worth considering whether it is capable of causing injury — a blanket term the airline can fall back on in its conditions of carriage. Shuttlecocks are probably fine.
■ Good news: following my recent rant about its toothlessness, the CAA says the independent arbitrator Ombudsman Services will take over dispute resolution in spring next year. Passengers will be able to take complaints about denied boarding, delays or cancellations to Ombudsman Services if they cannot reach a satisfactory resolution with the airline.