Ryanair today (Wed 20^th Sept) provided an update on its progress at working through the cancellation of 2,100 of its 103,000 flights over the next 6 weeks as follows:

– All 315,000 customers received email notices on Mon 18^th advising them of their flight changes and offering alternative flights, refunds and EU261 notices. (The figure is lower than the original 390,000 estimate because forward bookings in September were 90% but October were 70%)

– By close of business on Wed 20^th, Ryanair expects to have re-accommodated over 175,000 customers on other Ryanair flights – over 55% of affected customers.

– By close of business on Wed 20^th, more than 63,000 flight refunds will have been processed (over 20% of affected customers)

– The airline has taken on extra customer service staff to expedite the backlog of flight change requests and refunds.

– Ryanair expects to have processed over 300,000 alternative routings or refunds for customers (over 95% of affected customers) by the end of this week – within 6 days of customers being notified of these flight cancellations.

Ryanair’s Kenny Jacobs said:

“We apologise sincerely to each and every one of the 315,000 customers whose original flights were cancelled over a 6 week period in September and October, while we work to resolve this short term rostering failure.

We have taken on extra customer service teams to speed up the rate at which we accommodate and action alternative flight requests or refund applications. We expect to have the vast majority of these completed by the end of this week.

The vast majority of these requests are being dealt with online, but as our call centres and chat lines are extremely busy, we ask affected customers to bear with us as we do everything we can to respond to their requests and try to resolve any problems we have created for them, for which we again sincerely apologise.”