‘Bear with us’ pleads Ryanair as passengers vent frustration at cancellations
Ryanair says it is working hard to re-accommodate customers whose flights have been cancelled due to a mess-up over pilots leave.
But there are reports of jammed phone lines and the airline’s website crashing due to the number of passengers frantically trying to re-schedule their trips.
In total, the airline has cancelled 2,100 of its 103,000 flights over the next six weeks due to the mix-up over holiday allocation.
The airline said the number of cancellations were lower than the initial estimate of 390,000 because it had fewer forward bookings for October compared with September.
Some flights were cancelled with just a few hours notice and passengers were forced to fork out hundreds for hotel rooms and flights with rival airlines after being left stranded overseas.
Also, customers who had paid extra to check in bags or select their own seats on cancelled flights have complained of being charged again for their bags and seat selection on alternative flights. Some claimed they have even been charged re-booking fees.
Ryanair spokesman Kenny Jacobs asked affected passengers to ‘bear with us’, adding that extra staff had been taken on to deal with the backlog of refunds and flight changes.
The airline said it expects to have provided alternative routings or refunds for 95% of its customers by the end of this week.
Jacobs added: "We apologise sincerely to each and every one of the 315,000 customers whose original flights were cancelled over a six-week period in September and October, while we work to resolve this short-term rostering failure.
"We have taken on extra customer service teams to speed up the rate at which we accommodate and action alternative flight requests or refund applications. We expect to have the vast majority of these completed by the end of this week.
"The vast majority of these requests are being dealt with online, but as our call centres and chat lines are extremely busy, we ask affected customers to bear with us as we do everything we can to respond to their requests and try to resolve any problems we have created for them, for which we again sincerely apologise."
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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