Ryanair cancels 82 flights, seeks to clear pending ‘crew vacation’

Bloomberg

Ryanair Holdings Plc scrapped 82 flights on Sunday, the start of a six-week programme of cancellations it’s making as it seeks to reduce a backlog of crew vacation required by Irish regulators before the end of the year.
“We have messed up in the planning of pilot holidays and we’re working hard to fix that,” Kenny Jacobs, Ryanair’s chief marketing officer, said. In the statement, the Dublin-based carrier said it expected to cancel 40 to 50 flights daily, “with a slightly higher number this weekend.”
Ryanair will offer refunds or alternative flights to affected customers over the period, it said in a statement, adding that the cancellations, which amount to about 2 percent of its network, won’t have an impact on earnings in September and October. Between 308,000 and 385,000 passengers could be impacted over the period, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Ryanair is mandated by the Irish Aviation Authority to bring time off for the staff in line with the calendar year from January 1, requiring it to distribute the backlog before the end of the year. That’s left the carrier without enough pilots and flight attendants to man its full fleet of Boeing Co. 737s until the start of its winter timetable in November.
“We have operated a record schedule and traffic during the peak summer months of July and August but must now allocate annual leave to pilots and cabin crew,” spokesman Robin Kiely said. “We apologise sincerely to the small number of
customers affected by these cancellations, and will be doing our utmost to arrange alternative flights and/or full refunds for them.”
The move is also aimed at bringing punctuality back up to 90 percent by providing additional standby aircraft, after Ryanair’s on-time performance fell below 80 percent in the first two weeks of September. The delays have been prompted by air traffic control issues in France, the UK, Germany and Spain, as well as thunderstorms, it said in the release.
Ryanair has been flying its 189-seat planes at record load factors, with 12.7 million customers in
August and an occupancy rate of
97 percent.