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Beleaguered low cost carrier Ryanair has just announced that it will be cancelling an additional 18,000 flights between November 2017 and  March 2018, this is on top of the 2,000+ flights that have already been cancelled in September and October this year.

In another display of masterful understatement (or total nonsense, depending on your viewpoint!) Ryanair released the news with the following headline:

In a statement the company said,

“We sincerely apologise to those customers who have been affected by last week’s flight cancellations, or these sensible schedule changes announced today,” 

“From today, there will be no more rostering-related flight cancellations this winter or in summer 2018. 

I make no comment on the use of the word “sensible” there…

The latest wave of cancellations is particularly galling for passengers who may have opted to stick with Ryanair for future bookings despite the previous cancellations, due to Ryanair boss O’Leary stating last week that, “there won’t be more cancellations because of the rostering issues”.  

If you’re a real glutton for ridiculous double-speak, I highly recommend a read of all the new details provided by Ryanair here. My personal highlight was this bit (bold my own):

“Slower growth this winter will have positive but differing impacts on Ryanair’s stakeholder groups as follows

1. For Ryanair Customers

(a) Flying 25 fewer aircraft this winter will result in a number of flight and schedule changes from Nov to Mar 2018. We have less than 400,000 customers booked on these flights”.

What to do?

Fine, we’ve had enough fun at the expense of Ryanair’s PR department (for now anyway!), time to look at the more important issue of what to do if your flight has been cancelled.

According to Ryanair, every passenger affected should have “received an email today giving them between 5 weeks to 5 months notice of these schedule changes, offering them alternative flights or full refunds of their airfare. They have also received a €40 (€80 return) travel voucher which will allow them to book – during October – a flight on any Ryanair service between October and March 2018″.

Ryanair has a (genuinely) helpful looking page here with various contact details and relevant information.

My advice is to start there, do as much as you can yourself online (because the phone lines are going be very busy), and if you do have to ring, be as prepared as possible with some potential alternatives routes/dates already in mind.

As always in these sort of situations, be firm when it comes to your bottom line, but be friendly and polite with the agent – they aren’t responsible for your flight being cancelled and are probably having a very stressful day too!

Bottom line

It’s not getting any better for Ryanair at the moment!