Ryanair cancelled flights see shares TUMBLE as passengers rage over travel disruption

Ryanair said the cancellations, which were announced on Friday and began immediately, were designed “to improve its system-wide punctuality which has fallen below 80 percent in the first two weeks of September”.

The airline blamed a number of factors for the sudden cancellations including a backlog of staff leave, which must be allocated before the end of the year. 

It also said air traffic control strikes and weather disruptions were affecting its performance.

Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers sent emails to the first affected passengers on Friday, giving them the choice of a refund or an alternative flight, and has so far issued cancellation notices up until Wednesday.

The cancellations brought bad publicity for an airline which has worked hard over the past few years to improve its image.

News bulletins in Ireland ran interviews with disgruntled customers while newspapers asked readers to share their stories, including a wedding party who told the Irish Times they had been left stranded in France.

The Irish Independent reported on Monday that recruitment problems were also affecting Ryanair and that it had lost 140 pilots to rival Norwegian Air so far this year.

Ryanair has responded by starting to offer pilots a €10,000 (£8,800) “signing-on bonus”, the newspaper added, without citing any sources.

Shares in Ryanair were 3.1 percent lower, the second decline in a week after the company lost an EU court battle in which it sought to continue forcing cabin crew based outside Ireland to take their disputes to Irish courts.

Ireland’s Commission for Aviation Regulations said customers would be entitled to compensation depending on the notice period they had been given. 

Airline must provide at least two weeks notice to avoid paying compensation, the regulator said.

If the airline cancels 40 flights per day for six weeks, approximately 285,000 journeys would be affected, assuming a load factor – a measure of how full planes are – of 90 percent.

Ryanair, which described the cancellations as “unacceptable” to customers, said the planned cancellations represented less than 2 percent of its schedule.