Written 1 month ago by Angel Croitor

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Jackie Spain, owner of JK Travel in Tullamore, spoke to Will Faulkner on Midlands Today about Ryanair’s surprise cancellation of up to 50 flights in the next six weeks and how it may affect your own flights.

“The flights that seemed to be affected mostly are routes that have multiple flights per day.”

If your route will be affected the airline is saying that it will give you two weeks notice before you’re flight. That being said when they rolled out the news last Thursday some fliers have been told that their flights the very next day have been cancelled.

Jackie Spain suspects that the airline is looking at the less lucrative flights and cutting them due to a lack of demand. So flights to Lanzarote, Grand Canary, and Fuerteventura, flights that are fully booked, haven’t been affected nearly as much as flights to locations such as Santander.

The airline was offering that particular route in three days time and a full refund – what good is that when you’ve spent months waiting to fly out to your holiday. They are, however, rerouting people so that means that they’ll fly you out to the nearest airport to get a transfer but your liable to pay out of your own pocket to get to your final destination.

Would insurance cover you? Jackie informs us that it “depends on the type of insurance that you have”. She did mention that most people on a premium cover should have some way of claiming back the cost of the transfer.

Ryanair’s official reason for the cancellations is to “improve punctuality rates” above 90% and annual leave for pilots. Jackie believes it is the latter as the airline needs to honour and X amount of leave and if the pilots haven’t taken that leave it will carry on into the next season. That, she informs us, would cost Ryanair a lot more money than cancelling a few flights and upsetting the general public.

Have these flight cancellations affected your plans in the near or distant future? Tell us at midlandstoday@midlandsradio.fm

 

 

 

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