An elderly couple who printed the wrong boarding passes for a Ryanair flight said they were “horrified” after being hit by the airline’s £110 fee.

Ruth and Peter Jaffe, from Ealing, west London, had mistakenly printed their return boarding passes instead of the ones for their outbound flight to Bergerac, France.

This meant they were charged for having their tickets printed at Stansted airport, Essex on Friday.

Ryanair said the couple “failed to check in online” and were “correctly charged”.

Mrs Jaffe, 79, told BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme the airline’s website is “very confusing” and she believed she had printed the correct tickets.

She said: “We arrived at Stansted two hours before the flight and found that I had not got the outward boarding card, I’d only got the return one.

“I was then told that we’d have to go to the Ryanair desk to get a boarding card, and there they charged me £55 per person.

“(I was) horrified.”

Mr Jaffe, 80, said the couple felt they “didn’t have much choice” but to pay the fee as people were “expecting us at the other end”.

He added that Ryanair’s strategy “seems to be screw whatever you can out of the passengers”.

The couple’s daughter posted an angry message to Ryanair on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The woman, who did not give her name, wrote that her parents were charged “£110 for two pieces of paper which took one minute”.

She added: “Shame on you.”

Ryanair said in a statement: “All passengers travelling with Ryanair agree to check in online before arriving at their departure airport and all passengers are sent an email/SMS, reminding them to do so 24hrs before departure.

“We regret that these passengers ignored their email reminder and failed to check in online.”