Scots athlete reunited with £9K bike after Ryanair lost it twice in two countries

dailyrecord.co.uk:

A Team GB athlete who was due to compete in an Ironman triathlon in France was reunited with his £9000 bike after Ryanair lost it twice - in two different countries.Tom Kennedy, 31, had flown from Edinburgh to Nantes to take part in the gruelling competition last weekend but his hopes of qualifying were left up in the air after the airline lost his specialist equipment.

The engineer, from Stirling, was furious when he realised staff had originally failed to board his specialist bike, wetsuit and helmet onto the aircraft at Edinburgh Airport last Thursday, only for the same problem to arise in Dublin two days later.Tom had trained for the last 12 months for the competition and had hoped his performance would allow him to qualify for future events.

Ryanair told Tom's mum Sally it would take seven days to locate the equipment but they eventually agreed to reunite the pair in time for the 70.3KM swim, run and cycle race.Retired headteacher Sally said after numerous phone calls, Ryanair said they would fly the bike to Dublin and transfer it to Nantes on time for the race but this didn't go to plan.

The 60-year-old said: "Nothing about this was straightforward. After being told the earliest they could get it here was next week, we then received a call to say it was being flown to Dublin and then onto Nante on Saturday morning."But Tom's Airtag showed it hadn't moved from Dublin after the flight had taken off and they confirmed it had once again not been transferred onto the plane."We couldn't believe it as we had actually started to believe it was coming.