So they announce cancelling 40 to 50 flights a day and then on just Friday and Saturday there are 160 flights cancelled which is 80 a day ?
A transition of 9 months to change the holiday year and it's all left to the last 3 months to sort out ?

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/ryanair-to-cancel-up-to-50-flights-a-day-for-six-weeks-1.3222671#.WbwWYmDjD-M.twitter

Always getting better :-D:-D

My friends are flying back from Alicante October 4th & have booked alternative tickets today with Easyjet as they didn't dare risk the cancellation. Their holiday would have been full of stress otherwise not knowing if they were to receive the dreaded email!

Its all pretty pathetic. On time stats should also include cancelled ones. Some folks could only get 6 hours notice. Please note everyone- that you could be entitled to compensation. Citizens advice is very clear and easy to understand
Click here

We chatted about it first Fiona as she was worried sick. She's now hoping her Ryanair flight is cancelled so she can, at least, recoup some money.

Here's an interesting piece from the Irish Times

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/transport-and-tourism/long-running-row-over-definition-of-calendar-year-behind-ryanair-cancellations-1.3223808

It appears that the holiday year is industry wide in the pilot world running from January to December ( otherwise known to everyone else as a calendar year ) and an agreement for Ryanair to comply was agreed mid 2016 .

I think that Ryanair have made a commercial decision to suffer the loss of revenue and even costed in the compensation that might be claimed , what effect on future bookings remains to be seen .

They're not the first company or organisation to re-organise their leave year but they seem do have done it in a uniquely incompetent way! The University I worked for used to base theirs for academic staff on the academic year ie it ran from 1st September to 31st August and the Calendar year for all non-academic staff. They decided to unify it for everybody around the calendar year and all they did was have a transition period for the academics that ran for 16 months from 1st September in one year to the end of December the following year with all the academics carrying over the leave that would be accrued in the 4 month period 1st September to 31st December on a pro-rata basis.

I really don't understand why Ryannair couldn't do someting similar - why not just allow the staff involved to carry over any outstanding leave they were still due to take by 31st December 2017 into the new leave year starting 1st January 2018? So instead of everybody having to take their remaining leave in a short period of time they would do so on over a much longer time scale. Or am I missing something here?

Don't suppose it's owt to do with treating Ryanair employees like poo 💩 and now not having the pilots.? 140 pilots gone to Norwegian Air.

http://uk.businessinsider.com/norwegian-responds-to-ryanair-jab-2017-9

O'leary, the despicable eejit knows that he only has to 'hang on' until October when the winter flight schedules apply, thereby needing less pilots.
He couldn't give a monkeys about passengers, he never has and never will because the business model isn't programmed to care, you're just self loading freight ...so why is anybody surprised?

I've never flown with this cowboy outfit and I never will. I detest him with a passion.
If Brexit means the end of this gypsy slave labourer.....Good!

No doubt he'll be having a winter sale soon....oh wait. 🙄

http://i63.tinypic.com/10hprhc.jpg

Sanji x

The list of flights cancelled today 17th sep

https://www.ryanair.com/content/dam/ryanair/cancelled-flights-17-sept/List-of-cancelled-flights-17-sept1.pdf

I thought it was 40 to 50 flights cancelled per day as per their press release , the above list has 82 flights , and there was at least 160 cancelled on the Friday and Saturday ( the first 2 days )
Looks like a real struggle going on there with counting and understanding how a calendar works .

I reckon they will release a charity calendar next year on April 1st known as New Ryanairs Day , and some months will have 50 to 51 days , to maximise profits of course .

Rumour is they are low on pilots as quite a few have gone to Norwegian .

"Rumour is they are low on pilots as quite a few have gone to Norwegian"

Andy, not a rumour, see the above link.

2% still means 100% for the passengers affected.

Sanji x

I had read that somewhere , but couldn't find proof with a link to back up claim .
MoL made derisory comments about Norwegian , yet he's losing pilots to them ,
There is good news though , they are aiming to take over Alitalia

I once booked flights with Ryanair (back in 2008 ) and we ended up losing 2 days of our holiday because they cancelled our flights and rebooked us on flights 2 days later than we had originally booked. Unfortunately I needed to be in work the day they had rebooked us to travel home so we had to change to flights 2 days earlier and they charged us £80 for the privelege. I vowed to never touch them again.

Hubby has been desperate to visit Rome for years but it has never interested me so he decided to take his parents earlier this year as his dad has been unwell and had lost his confidence in travelling (their other son lives in New England and we all wanted him to be able to go out there again so Rome was a good starting point). Hubby booked return flights from Prestwick having no recollection of our previous nightmare with Ryanair and 3 weeks before they were due to travel I went online to book their parking only to discover that their return flight had been brought forward 9 hours and they were going to lose their last day in Rome. Hubby got on Twitter and Ryanair's reply was that they were going to send out an email in 2 days time. In the end they were able to rebook a flight coming back to Edinburgh around the time of their original flight but the result was 5 hours and 200 miles of driving for me.

Wow, photo link removed, maybe tinypics don't like MOL 😁 or think I'm advertising for him 😀



Sanji x

I wonder how this will work with people who have booked dynamically with a travel agent and the hotel refuses to change or give a refund to the customer via the travel agent.

As with the issues you see on the Love Holidays thread they only act as agent and your contracts are with the airline and hotel so not dependent.

I see a Ryanair are offering a refund on the flight but that's it. Maybe some people caught out here at a loss..

and folks may well be linking up to a long haul flight.

I would never, ever use Ryanair for a connecting flight - not even to another Ryannair flight! Look at their booking conditions and it makes it clear that even if you book eg Edinburgh - Stanstead and then an ongoing Ryanair to your final destination from Stanstead then you're on your own if you miss the 2nd flight even if the reason is that their flight was late/delayed/cancelled etc. They make it clear that even if you book both flights at the same time then you are not 'through ticketed' and as far as they are concerned these are two completely separate and unconnected bookings.

I wouldn't book Ryanair either.

I've booked with them for next June as were half the price of Jet2......gulp. Am going to be a nervous wreck for the next 10 months 😨

Ryanair has upset thousands of customers after announcing it will be cancelling up to 50 flights every day for the next six weeks because it has 'messed up in the planning of pilot holidays'.

It said the cancellations would help alleviate the impact of its decision to switch annual leave allocation for crew and pilots from April to March to to a calendar year from January 1 2018.

This has created a backlog of crew leave which must be allocated before December 31.

Robin Kiely, head of communications, said: "We have operated a record schedule and traffic numbers during the peak summer months of July and August but must now allocate annual leave to pilots and cabin crew in September and October, while still running the bulk of our summer schedule.

"This increased leave, at a time of ATC capacity delays and strikes, has severely reduced our on-time performance over the past two weeks to under 80%."

He apologised to the 'small number' of customers affected by the cancellations, and said the airline would be doing its utmost to arrange alternative flights and/or full refunds for them.

But the announcement was met with anger and frustration from consumer rights groups and passengers, particularly those who were due to fly this weekend.

Rory Boland, travel editor of consumer magazine Which?, said: "Ryanair cancelling many flights at short notice will cause huge inconvenience and great distress for its passengers. It must arrange alternative flights or provide a full refund for everyone affected."The airline has issued a link updating all cancellations up to and including Wednesday this week, Shares in Ryanair fell 3% on news of the mass cancellations

Courtesy of Travelmole

I think it would help a bit if they could change their stance when making statements .

1 . They have known about the pilots holiday situation for a long time , it's not suddenly been sprung on them .
2. They state that part of the problem is also due to ATC restrictions and bad weather and strikes , obviously other airlines have to contend with these issues too , but it's announced as if problems are being caused by others and not down to their poor planning of holidays ( which they have known about !! )
3. They make an apology to the " small number " of customers affected , yes it might be a small number in the scheme of their operation, but EVERYONE who has a flight booked with them ( in the next 6 weeks ) doesn't really know if their flight will be cancelled or not . They are underplaying the uncertainty their customers are experiencing .

Most businesses will make commercial decisions that affect customers and airlines seem to be adept at that , the relatively low price of air travel would not exist if they were not hard nosed regarding figures , we all want the low prices , but there has to be an acceptable level of service and responsibility to the customer too . Ryanair will suffer financially for a short time , but will soon have people " crawling over broken glass to get their low prices " as MoL pointed out in the past , I doubt his confidence is waning at the moment .

Personally I wouldn't book with Ryanair , whilst they have low prices by the time you factor in luggage etc ( which I always take on holiday ) there's not much of a saving and I'm lucky to live near to airports which have a reasonable amount of competition and choice , but I see why people do book with them as they provide a very cheap effective service , as always it just when things go wrong when you realise when something's cheap there's a good reason why .