LEINSTER fans hoping to make it to Edinburgh for the Heineken Cup final have been hammered by the airlines. Fans were hit with hikes of up to €400 just hours after watching their team triumph in Croker.

Ryanair will charge up to eight times the normal amount while Aer Lingus has increased the flight prices by up to €355. In a move dubbed “shameful” by the Consumer Association of Ireland (CAI), many will be priced out of the showdown.

The Herald has found that flights to Edinburgh for the weekend of May 23 are as much as eight times more expensive than on comparable weekends. A flight with Ryanair leaving Dublin on Friday afternoon and returning on Sunday night will cost €562. The same flight on a normal weekend would be priced at just €162.

A passenger could fly to Boston with Aer Lingus for the same weekend and have €50 spending money left in their pocket. Other flights with Ryanair have gone up from €54 to €432.

Aer Lingus flights to Edinburgh have jumped in price too with the carrier charging at least four times more than it would on an average weekend.

A day trip, flying over early on Saturday and returning that night, will cost €455. The exact same combination of flights on June 5 will cost just €100.

The chief executive of the CAI, Dermot Jewell, told the Herald today that airlines are taking advantage of fans. “We are a country in recession and the team needs our support,” said Mr Jewell.

“Purely and simply they are taking advantage of people who need to get somewhere.” While Mr Jewell said he understands the logic of supply and demand, he added: “It's just opportunistic to put the prices up so much.

“They assume that fans will pay any price to get there, and very many of them will. “But the bottom line is that it creates hardship for people. If you consistently charge prices that are at an unrealistic level it is going to create hardship.”

PROBLEM

Accommodation in Edinburgh will also pose a problem as many hotels have been booked up by people who bought tickets that have been on general sale since last May.

The Leinster rugby branch will get an allocation of just 7,500 tickets. European rugby chiefs put most of the 67,400 tickets on general sale last year, although it is thought that many were bought by Munster fans.

The Herald attempted to contact both Ryanair and Aer Lingus but no replies were received. Mr Jewell said: “This is not the first time that we have been asked to comment on something like this, and sadly it's unlikely to be the last.”

- Kevin Doyle