Ryanair Cancelled flight refund

I had an interesting call from a friend flying from london to cork a few months ago. He asked how bad the snow was as he had been told that the reason his flight to cork was cancelled was due to bad weather.... I described the blue skys i could see outside the window. The gatwick - cork flight was the only flight not to leave gatwick and arrive in cork, however ryanair felt able to blame the cancellation on 'bad weather'. how can this be legal?
It is time that people were refunded automatically to their credit cards in the case of cancelled flights. Leaving it to the airlines (particularly certain budget ones) is an excercise in pointlessness.

I would strongly suggest that if Ryanair are ignoring your letters requesting a refund - you tell them that you are lodging a claim against Ryanair through the small claims court. As your flight was cancelled you were entitled to a full refund or re-routing under Regulation (EC) No. 261/2004. The exact regulation and its details of the articles can be obtained from the Commission for Aviation Regulations website. The relevant articles that you need is Article 5 and Article 8. Also Article 14 comes into play as did Ryanair at time of cancelling inform you with a written document of your rights under the Regulation. Send Ryanair a final letter giving them 5 working days notice for full refund and detailing their non-compliance with the articles of the Regulation. To take a case through the small claims process is 15 euros - and you dont need a solicitor. You will need the company name of Ryanair and this together with their company registration number can be got from the Company Registrations Office online www.cro.ie. If you need any further help get in touch. Good luck.

And don't forget that you are also entitled to compensation...

Well I had some bad luck with Euclaim.

After they had told me I had a real case for compensation and that they were sure of this as they had investigated the weather reports etc for the day; and after they had gotten me to send a letter in to their Irish based solicitor and many months of correspondence I finally got an email from them saying that the flight had been cancelled for genuine reasons therefore I am getting nothing.