More than half of Ryanair’s clients will have their flight rescheduled today
The low cost airline should made 63 thousand reimbursements this Wednesday, which represents 20% of passengers affected by the cancellation of their flights.
Ryanair hopes to be able to reschedule, by end of today, alternative flights for over 55% of the total amount of passengers affected by flight cancellations which will continue until the end of October. On the other hand, 63 thousand reimbursements have been made, which represents 20% of all passengers.
These alternative flights concern the 2,100 trips that were to take off between September 21 and the end of October, but didn’t because their flights were cancelled due to a lack of pilots. Ryanair made a poor management of its employees’ vacation leaves, and so many pilots ended up scheduling their vacation during these six weeks.
The Irish airline stated that these cancellations will affect 315 thousand passengers. “This is a lower number than what the initial estimate, which was 390,000, since September’s occupancy rates were 90%, but for October it was 70%”, the low cost airline explains, in a press release sent to newsrooms.
All these clients “have been notified of the change in their flights by email and told of the possibility of taking alternative flights, of being reimbursed and of the EU 261 [which predicts an indemnity regime from airlines]”. Ryanair also explained that by the end of Wednesday, September 20th, they “hope to have rescheduled alternative flights for over 175 thousand passengers — over 55% of the total amount of affected passengers”. Also by the end of this Wednesday, “over 63 thousand reimbursements will have been made, which is equivalent to more than 20% of those clients”, the same press release states.
The company hopes to solve the majority of these reschedule requests by the end of this week, stated Kenny Jacobs, responsible for Ryanair’s marketing.
“Most of these requests are being solved online, but since our phone and chat lines are extremely busy, we ask our clients to have a little patience, knowing we are doing everything we can to answer them and try to solve any problem we may have caused, and for which we, once again, sincerely apologize“, states Kenny Jacobs, in the press release.
