Ryanair Cancels Flights after it ‘Messed Up’ Pilots Holidays

Irish low-cost carrier Ryanair on Monday confirmed a number of flight cancellations between Thursday, September 21 and Tuesday October 31.

Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary said the airline “messed up” the allocation of annual leave to pilots in September and October “because we are trying to allocate a full year’s leave into a 9 month period from April to December”.

According to the airline, the cancellations have been allocated where possible, to Ryanair’s bigger base airports, and routes with multiple daily frequencies so that Ryanair can offer these disrupted customers the maximum number of alternate flights and routes in order to minimise inconvenience to them.

“This is a mess of our own making,” said O’Leary.

“I apologise sincerely to all our customers… We have only taken this decision to cancel this small proportion of our 2,500 daily flights so that we can provide extra standby cover and protect the punctuality of the 98% of flights that will be unaffected by these cancellations,” he added.

The full list of the flight cancellations will appear on the Ryanair.com website later today and customers affected by these cancellations will be emailed with offers of alternative flights or full refunds, and details of their EU261 compensation entitlement.

The airports where one line of flying will be removed for the next 6 weeks are as follows, (these airports have been selected because of the high frequency of flights Ryanair operates to/from these airports where customers can be offered the most accommodating options):

“This issue will not recur in 2018 as Ryanair goes back onto a 12 month calendar leave year from January 1 to December 31, 2018,” said O’Leary.