A Holiday Accident Case Study – Client Situation
Our client was boarding a Ryanair flight from London Stansted to Plovdiv Airport in Bulgaria with his wife when he suffered a knee injury.
As he proceeded to his seat, his right foot suddenly shot forward and his knee slammed into the back of the seat in front. This was caused by the floor carpet giving way and left him in great pain.
Although the pain did start to ease, his knee swelled up alarmingly, so about 40 minutes into the flight he asked one of the cabin crew for help. The flight attendant didn’t have a bandage, but did apply some ice to his knee after our client asked for some. While this did help with the swelling, his knee continued to hurt for the rest of the flight.
Our client also requested that the flight attendant write an incident report. However, he was told they didn’t do this on board flights and recommended that he contact Ryanair’s head office instead.
After spending several days in Bulgaria, our client and his wife embarked on a planned coach transfer from Bulgaria to Greece, which lasted around 6 hours and was very uncomfortable for him.
While in Bulgaria and Greece, he had to spend lots of time with his leg elevated to ease the pain in his knee, and he was forced to limit the amount of walking that he did.
As a result, the couple couldn’t spend as much time on the beach as they would have liked, and they scaled back on the number of excursions they planned to do. On one occasion they did try to go horse riding, but had to cut it short as the pain in our client’s knee was too severe.
During his return flight home to the UK, his leg felt a bit better and he was able to return to work. However, his work involved lots of bending over and kneeling, so he started to experience more pain, discomfort and stiffness in his knee.
He took painkillers on occasion, wore a bandage on his knee, continued to apply ice and rested his knee as much as possible. However, the pain got so bad that it affected his work performance, and several weeks after coming back off his holiday, he decided to see his doctor.
After discussing what had happened on the Ryanair flight, he was told that he could’ve sustained damage to the membrane under his knee cap and was prescribed anti-inflammatories. Our client had never suffered any knee problems before, so believed that his recent problems must have been the result of the accident that he had on the Ryanair plane.
We're rated‘Excellent’How We Helped
Our client got in touch with our team of Holiday Claims Solicitors for help with claiming compensation from Ryanair. Senior Associate Solicitor James Blower, who specialises in holiday accident claims, took on his case and arranged for him to undergo an independent medical assessment, so a report outlining his condition could be produced.
James presented this to Ryanair and argued that the injury he sustained and the problems he has had since the flight were directly caused by the loose carpet on the plane. The airline was therefore liable, as proper safety checks should have taken place. Our client also informed us that the experience was made worse as he felt the cabin crew weren’t very helpful when they saw he was in pain, even though they knew what had caused it.
Furthermore, James told Ryanair that the injury spoiled his holiday and has negatively affected his everyday life ever since. Indeed, he still feels occasional pain in his knee, while it sometimes feels a bit loose and clicks whenever he goes up stairs.
Our client’s work has also been affected, as his work involves climbing up ladders and kneeling down. Since he struggles at work, he has had to turn down overtime that has been offered, which he believes has financially affected him and his wife, and harmed his future promotion prospects.
Outside of work, he can no longer enjoy certain leisure activities like he used to. For example, he used to do lots of cycling, but his knee now stiffens up after about 10 minutes, so he cannot cycle for any longer. Similarly, his knee injury has limited what he can do at the gym, so he now mainly sticks to upper body work.
The impact of the injury has also caused our client considerable stress and unhappiness and he is worried about whether he will ever fully recover.
The Outcome
Ryanair accepted liability for our client’s injuries and agreed to pay our client £2,208 in compensation.
For more information see Airline Accident and Injury Claims.
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