Ryanair taunted BA with 'Geography for Dummies' — and got its own map shamed

In March 2019, a British Airways flight to Düsseldorf landed in Edinburgh instead — the wrong country — because contractor WDL Aviation filed the wrong flight plan, one air traffic control received and saw nothing amiss. The mix-up only became apparent when passengers realised they had landed in Scotland.

Ryanair couldn't resist. It tagged its UK rival in a tweet posting the cover of 'Geography for Dummies', revelling in the 'unfortunate mix-up'. The internet did what the internet does: users replied with Ryanair's own geography failures.

One cited flight FR8582 from London to Thessaloniki that landed in Timisoara, Romania — 500 miles and two international frontiers away — after fog diverted it; passengers were offered an 18-hour ride on 'an old bus', 89 refused, and the Greek government ultimately dispatched an Aegean Airlines plane, landing displaced passengers a full day late. Another pointed to 2006, when an Eirjet flight operating for Ryanair landed at a military airbase instead of City of Derry airport due to pilot error.

The joke invited an audit: tagging BA practically dared users to check Ryanair's own record.

The counterexamples were recent, vivid and verifiable — down to the flight number.

Ryanair had just been voted the UK's worst short-haul airline for the sixth straight year, handing critics a scoreboard.

Punching at a rival's error only works if your own record is clean — audiences will audit you faster than you can post.

BA said the wrong plan came from WDL Aviation and that controllers saw nothing amiss; WDL said it was working with authorities to determine the cause of the 'obviously unfortunate mix-up'. Ryanair's tweet stood as the backlash accumulated under it.