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Ryanair mocks British Airways with 'Geography for Dummies' book after it flew to Edinburgh rather than Germany

‘Even we wouldn’t flog Edinburgh as Germany'

Simon Calder
Travel Correspondent
Tuesday 26 March 2019 10:42 GMT
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British Airways flight accidentally lands at Edinburgh instead of Dusseldorf

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A Twitter row has broken out between Ryanair and British Airways after a BA flight from London to Dusseldorf mistakenly flew to Edinburgh.

The mix-up happened because the German pilots of a sub-contracted plane flew Sunday’s flight pattern on Monday.

Ryanair has offered to help the errant airline by sending a present: “Hey, @British_Airways, we have a present for you,” it wrote, next to a picture of the cover of the book Geography for Dummies.

The BA Twitter monitor responded: “Now, now. No one is perfect. Lolly.”

Ryanair responded: “True, Lolly! Even we wouldn’t flog Edinburgh as Germany,” with the hashtag #DusseldorfNorth.

At this point the travelling public intervened, with Julie El Taher tweeting: “Get a room you two. And a map.”

Pete Howard offered: “Nice to see @Ryanair and @British_Airways have something in common at last, by dropping [their] customers in a completely different place to where they have booked!”

C Weir tweeted simply: “Ballykelly army base/City of Derry airport **cough cough**” – a reference to an incident in 2006 when a Liverpool-City of Derry flight operated by Eirjet on behalf of Ryanair landed at a military airstrip rather than the airport serving Northern Ireland’s second city.

Ashley Hinton asked: “What everyone [wants] to know is if the detour counted towards Avios points.”

Meanwhile Eurocontrol has dismissed criticism that it should have spotted the error, saying: “We get 30k flight plans a day. If someone files for EGPH and then flies there, no eyebrows are elevated.”

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