Ryanair today (29^th Sept) emailed all (under 1%) of its customers who were affected by its deeply regretted 2,100 flight cancellations in Sept/Oct, or the 18,000 schedule changes (announced on Wed, 27^th)  from November 2017 to March 2018, in order to explain their entitlements under EU261 regulations as follows.

Ryanair is required to offer disrupted customers (on cancelled flights) the option of a full refund or re-routing to their final destination as follows;

(A) Refund Option:

A full refund will be given of an unused flight sector and associated fees.  If the disrupted flight is their outbound sector, customers will also be offered a full refund of the return sector.

(B)  Re-routing Options:

Ryanair will offer all disrupted customers the following sequence of re-accommodation options;

1. First, move the customer to the next available Ryanair flight on the same route.

If this option is not available same or next day, then;

2. Move the customer to the next available Ryanair flight from/to a suitable alternative airport/s (for example: Luton or Gatwick in the case of Stansted).

If this option is not available same or next day, then;

3. Offer the customer re-accommodation on any one of our agreed disruption partner airlines to their destination as follows;

Easyjet, Jet2, Vueling, Cityjet, Aer Lingus, Norwegian or Eurowings airlines.

If this option is not available same or next day, then;

4. Offer the customer re-accommodation on any comparable alternative transport (another airline flight, train, bus or car hire) with the cost of this comparable transport ticket to be assessed on a case by case basis.

Under EU261, Ryanair will also reimburse any reasonable out of pocket expenses incurred by customers as a result of these flight cancellations, subject to receiving an EU261 expense claim  form from customers supported by original receipts.

If any Ryanair customer on one of these disrupted flights believes that they may have chosen an option that was not suitable for them as a result of any misunderstanding of their EU261 rights, then they should write directly to Ryanair’s Director of Customer Services and Ryanair will assist them in any way it can to obtain their full EU261 rights and entitlements.

Ryanair’s Kenny Jacobs said:

“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 18^th September cancellations.  This week (by close of business on Sun, 1^st Oct), 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 Wed 27^th.

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 restored the reliability and punctuality of our flight operations.  Over the past 7 days we have operated over 15,000 flights with over 96% of our first wave morning departures operating on time, or with zero flight cancellations.

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.”