Co Kildare holidaymakers among the 1000s impacted by Ryanair's 'mess'

Ryanair's Michael O'Leary admits to a 'mess' with up to 50 cancellations daily over the next six weeks, due to errors in holiday allocations for pilots.

Ryanair   is confirming  the full list of flight cancellations , just under 50 daily,  between this  Thursday until Tuesday October 31.These 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.

The full list of these flight cancellations (from Thurs 21st September  to Thurs Oct 31st) will appear on the Ryanair.com website have been published  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 six 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):

Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary said: "Ryanair is not short of pilots – we were able to fully crew our peak summer schedule in June, July and August – but we have messed up the allocation of annual leave to pilots in Sept and Oct because we are trying to allocate a full year’s leave into a 9 month period from April to December. This issue will not recur in 2018 as Ryanair goes back onto a 12 month calendar leave year from 1st Jan to 31st December 2018.This is a mess of our own making. I apologise sincerely to all our customers for any worry or concern this has caused them over the past weekend. 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.”