Ryanair to re-route passengers hit by flight cancellations

Ryanair has backed down and agreed to the Civil Aviation Authority’s demand that it should offer to re-route passengers affected by two sets of cancellations announced earlier this month.

It has also spelt out on its website and in emails sent to the thousands of affected passengers what refunds and reimbursements they can claim from the airline.

Crucially, it has told passengers that they are entitled to be re-routed on alternative flights with easyJet, Jet2, Vueling, Cityjet, Aer Lingus, Norwegian or Eurowings if it is unable to re-book them with Ryanair.

The CAA had given Ryanair until 5pm Friday to clarify its passengers’ rights under the EU261 regulations.

In a press release, Ryanair said it had met with the Irish Commission for Aviation Regulation and agreed to implement a series of steps to address the its requirements to ensure that all customers affected by Ryanair’s recent flight cancellations were fully aware of their EU261 rights and entitlements, including full refunds, or re-accommodation onto other Ryanair flights or other comparable transport options with reimbursement of reasonable out of pocket expenses.

It added that it had sent a new email to all affected customers outlining their rights to refunds, re-routing on Ryanair or on other comparable transport options and expenses.

It has also issued a further press release explaining to customers how and when they will be re-accommodated on other Ryanair flights or other airline flights.

This press release is displayed on the home page of Ryanair’s website.

Ryanair has also updated the FAQ pages of its website to reflect all of these changes.

The airline said it had replied to the CAA, agreeing to meet its requirement for customer clarification on Ryanair’s EU261 obligations, which are in line with those requested by the CAR.

However, the airline accused the CAA of failing to apply the same rules to British Airways in May this year, when a computer meltdown stranded hundreds of thousands of its passengers.

Ryanair’s Kenny Jacobs said on Friday: "We apologise again sincerely for the disruption and inconvenience our rostering failure has caused some of our customers.

"Over the past week we have refunded/reaccommodated over 97% of the customers affected by the 18th September cancellations. This week we will have reaccommodated/refunded over 90% of the 400,000 customers who were notified of schedule changes on flights between November 2017 and March 2018 on Wednesday.

"In addition, every single affected customer has received a travel voucher for a €40 one way flight (€80 return) for travel in October to March.

"We have taken on extra customer service staff and are moving now to process and expedite all EU261 claims from affected customers. We are committed to processing all such claims within 21 days of receipt and hope to have all such claims settled before the end of October."