Desperate Ryanair bosses have offered pilots a £12,000 bonus for ten days work as the airline battles to ease its cancellation crisis, which has left many broke and in tears.
Pilots and First Officers have been promised up to £1,200-a-day if they fly when they are meant to be on holiday up until the end of October.
Ryanair has cancelled as many as 2,000 flights will leave up to 400,000 passengers stranded over the next six weeks.
Some victims have told MailOnline how they have been reduced to tears after spending £20 or more on calls to its premium rate helpline – if they can get through at all.
Many have scrambled to spend up to £1,500 on flights with rivals after being unable to find a free replacement flight until up to two weeks later.
Stella Scott, 69, was sent a cancellation text as she prepared to leave for Malaga Airport with her husband Robert, 61, daughter Abby, 36, son-in-law Dave, 34, and grandson Luke, three, and was offered a flight home nine days later.
Stella Scott, 69, with her husband Robert, 61, daughter Abby, 36, son-in-law Dave, 34, and grandson Luke, three, in Spain before their Spanish holiday was ruined by Ryanair
Queues form at the Ryanair desk at Stansted yesterday as customers face six weeks of cancellations
Chief executive Michael O’Leary is reportedly offering £12,000 bonuses to pilots who can ease their cancellation crisis
She told MailOnline: ‘It was only six hours before our flight to Bristol and we thrown into a complete panic about it. Ryanair are terrible – the next flight they could offer us was nine days later.
‘My son-in-law had to be in work the next morning so was forced to fly without us to Luton and find his way back to Wales from there.
‘The rest of us booked for £82 each to fly to Birmingham with BA, we then had to pay £62 to hire a car to complete our journey to Bristol. Unbfortunately we have some flights booked with them in October – but we will think twice about using them agan now’.
On Monday Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary hinted he would seek to strike a deal with pilots as he took responsibility for the rostering ‘mess’ that could see as many as 2,000 flights cancelled and leave up to 400,000 passengers stranded over the next six weeks.
Yesterday, a memo sent to pilots by the airline’s chief operations officer, Michael Hickey, offered a £12,000 bonus to staff who had already been assigned a month off as part of attempts to resolve the rostering issues.
The memo is believed to be an attempt to plug the holes in Ryanair’s flight schedule and ease the forced cancellation of up to 50 flights per day.
It read: ‘To avoid further cancellations, we are requesting between one and two blocks of five days from every pilot who has already been assigned their month off.’
However, although the work takes place in October this year, the payment will not be made until November 1, 2018, in what looks like an attempt by the airline to retain its pilots.
Mr Hickey states: ‘All current pilots… who remain operating Ryanair aircraft between September and 31st October 2018 will receive a once-off €12,000/£12,000 gross bonus for captains and €6,000/£6,000 for first officers in November 2018.’
Those who accept the offer but leave the company before October 31 next year will not receive the bonus.
Pilots who have four or more unauthorised absences in that period will also lose the payment.
Part of the disruptions at Ryanair have been blamed on a number of the carrier’s pilots being poached for jobs at Norwegian Air.
Ryanair has played down these reports but has admitted that at least 140 of their employees have left for the rival company.
When contacted by the Irish Daily Mail for comment yesterday, Ryanair responded: ‘We don’t comment on rumour or speculation, especially when it originates from competitor pilot unions.’
Passengers desperately trying to rebook flights have been left incensed at a second round of fees for checking in bags and allocated seating.
The budget airline’s response to the chaos triggered by its decision at the weekend to cancel more than 2,000 flights was last night described as an ‘omni-shambles’ as its call centre struggled to cope with furious customers.
After 50 flights a day for the next six weeks were cancelled – affecting about 400,000 people – travellers trying to re-book complained of being unable to get through to an adviser or of long waits on hold on a premium rate number. Others complained the ‘live chat’ service on its website was not working.
The airline charges £2 per person for standard seats booked online, rising to £11 for certain priority seats, and at least £25 for each item of baggage.
Graham Walsh, from Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, said: ‘Ryanair charge again for seat allocation that you’ve already paid on the cancelled flight.’
In another chaotic day, Ryanair, the airline promised to refund these customers. Chief marketing officer Kenny Jacobs said: ‘We are aware of this issue and any customer who has been double charged for bags or allocated seating will be refunded.’
Sheila and Stuart Mackenzie had to travel from Bristol to Stansted overnight and are at least £300 out of pocket already
Ryanair has stranded many customers with Rebecca Brown and Neil Johnson forced to spend up to £1,500 of their own money on new flights to get home
The airline also came under fire from passengers who couldn’t get through to its advisers, or were forced to wait on hold on its premium-rate helpline, racking up bills at 68p a minute. One passenger tweeted: ‘To anyone trying to call Ryanair – dig deep. I spent 15 minutes in a queue and it cost me £11.’
Another named Charlene wrote: ‘Ryanair, you cancel my flight tomorrow then I can’t get in contact! No link works and your phone and live chat are down!’
Ryanair insisted its chat service and call centres were ‘operating as normal’ but with ‘higher volumes’ of calls. But consumer campaigner Martin Lewis criticised the airline’s reaction to the crisis. He said: ‘Ryanair’s response has been an omni-shambles, but it could never have been anything else.
‘The company is simply not set up to deal with this.’
The airline is battling to cope with the fallout after cancelling 2,024 flights, which it blamed on ‘messing up’ its holiday rota for pilots, resulting in too many taking breaks at the end of the year. Yesterday they were fresh tales of misery from passengers stranded abroad.