Ryanair cancels flights

According the travel expert Simon Calder, writing in The Independent, up to 9,000 Ryanair passengers a day face having their travel plans wrecked as the airline cancels “40 to 50” flights a day until the end of October.

The budget airline, which is Europe’s largest, said the move was to “improve its system-wide punctuality”.

Ryanair blames “a combination of ATC capacity delays and strikes, weather disruptions and the impact of increased holiday allocations to pilots and cabin crew”.

The airline is changing its April-to-March annual leave calendar to a January-to-December model. As a result flight crews are seeking to take their full allocation of holiday, leaving Ryanair’s most ambitious summer schedule ever short of staff.

In a statement Ryanair said it has a backlog of crew leave. “These tighter crewing numbers and the impact of ATC capacity restrictions in the UK, Germany and Spain, as well as French ATC strikes and adverse weather (thunderstorms) have given rise to significant delays in recent weeks.”

Ryanair’s on-time performance has declined from 90% to under 80% over the past two weeks, which the airline says “is unacceptable to Ryanair and its customers”.

www.ryanair.com

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