Ryanair is today facing a boycott and boss Michael O’Leary was accused of cancelling Christmas after wrecking the plans of 400,000 more passengers.
Two weeks after scrapping 2,000 autumn flights, the budget airline said a further 18,000 will be grounded this winter and thirty-four routes will be suspended in a desperate attempt to solve a staffing crisis.
A senior Ryanair pilot told MailOnline: ‘The slow in growth is because there’s no one to fly the aircraft we have, let alone new ones’.
Customers have been left in tears after their plans for Christmas were ruined when many services between London and Scotland, Northern Ireland and European destinations were axed this winter.
Some have paid up to £550 for flights with rivals or forced to accept they will not now see family over the festive period.
Dan Crabb and his fiancee Sophie are among 400,000 Ryanair passengers affected and part of their honeymoon has now been ruined – and shares in the company fell sharply after British aviation authorities claimed they were breaking the law.
Ryanair and Michael O’Leary have been accused of wrecking Christmas for many customers
These are the 34 flight routes that will be scrapped until March 2018 following today’s announcement by Ryanair. It includes routes such as London Stansted to Edinburgh and Glasgow, Gatwick to Belfast, Newcastle to Faro, and Glasgow to Las Palmas
Dan Crabb is one of almost 400,000 Ryanair passengers to get an unwelcome email from the airline yesterday
Many have started using the hashtag #boycottryanair and are also calling for Michael O’Leary to resign.
Danny Band tweeted: ‘Thanks @Ryanair no longer have flights home 4 Christmas .Just weeks after your staff refused to help me at Stansted with 2 young children.
Erin Davies wrote simply: ‘Thanks for messing up my Christmas plans’ and Dominic Gusah said: ‘Thanks to @Ryanair , we really will be ‘Driving home for Christmas’ this year’.
Adam Kinsley told followers: ‘Don’t book a flight with @Ryanair ever again people. Make them go bust #peoplepower #boycott #ryanaircancellations’.
Anne Strachan said: @Ryanair breaking the law. You have legal rights when they mess up. But don’t book with them #Boycott #ryanair’ while @IanSmokesmac said: ‘The only language @Ryanair will understand is a full scale boycott’.
Gareth Lemon wrote: ‘Hopefully this will be the end of Michael O’Leary’.
Ryanair has admitted ‘messing up’ its holiday rosters for pilots, leaving too few on standby to keep schedules on track.
Although the second wave of cancellations is bigger than the first, similar numbers of passengers will be hit because the flights are not yet booked out.
All services between London and Scotland will be scrapped over the festive period, along with many linking European cities.
Passengers are not entitled to compensation because they have had at least 14 days notice.
‘This situation is a complete and utter shambles that now extends to up to nearly three quarters of a million people,’ said Alex Neill, of the consumer group Which?
‘Ryanair has effectively cancelled Christmas for some of its passengers.’
Some internet wags have lampooned the airline’s cancellation crisis in a series of memes
There are calls for customers to boycott the airline after the latest slew of cancellations
All routes between London and Scotland will be scrapped over the festive period.
Passengers are not entitled to compensation because they have had at least 14 days notice.
Mark Cooper, from Tamworth, has branded Ryanair ‘inhumane’ after he had to fork out nearly £1,000 and travel 1,400 miles to get home from Estonia when two of his flightswere cancelled.
Mr Cooper was left stranded in Tallinn when the plane operator cancelled his return flight to Birmingham twice in three days.
Hundreds of thousands of travellers have seen their flights cancelled by the low-cost operator because of a pilot shortage crisis.
The 58-year-old had to pay for three extra nights in the Estonian capital – but finally decided to make his own way home after being told all Ryanair flights were full for the remainder of the week.
This meant a mammoth trip to Copenhagen and then Manchester, before he finally got home three days late.
Mark, who works as an administrator, is now determined to claim his money back from Ryanair.
‘Ryanair simply left passengers in the dark and alone to deal with any issues that they may have had to face,’ he said.
‘Their treatment is shoddy at best and inhumane is probably closer to the mark.
‘They had absolutely no clue what they were doing and their chat app that I had been using to try and sort out my flights was a complete waste of time.
‘Luckily I am old enough and ugly enough to get myself home, but for those with young families or travelling alone it would be a complete nightmare.
‘I would urge those thinking about booking through Ryanair to go elsewhere.’
Alex Neill, of the consumer group Which?, said the offer of a £40 voucher would be cold comfort for passengers who could not book the flight they required.
She said: ‘This situation is a complete and utter shambles that now extends to up to nearly three quarters of a million people.
‘Ryanair has effectively cancelled Christmas for some of its passengers.’
The latest fiasco heaps further pressure on Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary. The airline has been accused of failing to tell passengers how to claim compensation – and of refusing to book them on alternative airlines.
And last night the Civil Aviation Authority launched enforcement action against Ryanair ‘for persistently misleading’ customers. Some said they would never fly with the carrier again. Others fear being left out of pocket, having already booked accommodation or car hire.
Steve Double, a Tory member of the Commons transport committee, said Mr O’Leary had ‘to provide some real answers about how this has been allowed to happen’.
Ryanair said reducing its flying schedule in a ‘controlled manner’ would eliminate all risk of further cancellations, providing spare aircraft and crews over the winter.
It had hoped to avoid the extra cancellations after offering pilots entitled to holiday up to £12,000 to come into work for a week. But this was rejected by a group of pilots who demanded better working conditions instead. The airline yesterday insisted hundreds of pilots had taken up the offer.
The cancellations will ground all flights linking London to Glasgow, Edinburgh and Belfast, with 34 routes suspended between November 17 and March 18.
The suspended services include Glasgow to Las Palmas, Edinburgh to Szczecin in Poland, and Edinburgh to Hamburg. Ryanair said it would take 25 of its 400 planes across Europe out of action during the five-month period.
Ryanair is trending on Twitter with many extremely upset by the new wave of cancellations
Ryanair boss Mr O’Leary has admitted ‘messing up’ its holiday rosters for pilots, leaving too few on standby to keep schedules on track
Ryanair is breaking the law in its handling of flight cancellations, the boss of the UK’s aviation regulator has claimed.
Mark Cooper was on holiday in the Estonian capital when his flight home was cancelled twice by Ryanair
Andrew Haines, chief executive of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), said he was ‘furious’ with the Dublin-based carrier because it is not telling passengers they are entitled to be re-routed by other airlines.
‘They are not making it clear to people their entitlement,’ Mr Haines told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
‘If they follow through on what they are saying then they would be breaking the law.’
A Ryanair spokesman said: ‘We will be meeting with the CAA and will comply fully with whatever requirements they ask us to.’
The CAA can take court action to force airlines to make changes but it cannot impose fines.
The company said many of the 18,000 flights cancelled yesterday were empty and the decision would affect just one service a day at each of its 200 airports. But the move was significant enough for 400,000 passengers to be sent an email telling them their flights had been axed.
As with the first wave of cancellations, which affected around 315,000 people, there is a choice between rebooking and a refund. Ryanair has offered both groups of passengers vouchers of £40 for single fares and £80 for returns.
Guy Anker, of Moneysavingexpert.com called it ‘another kick in the teeth for Ryanair passengers’.
Mr O’Leary said: ‘We sincerely apologise to those customers who have been affected by last week’s flight cancellations, or these sensible schedule changes announced today. While over 99 per cent of our 129million customers will not have been affected…we deeply regret any doubt we caused.’
Ryanair insisted there was no shortage of pilots. But one told the Mail: ‘This is rubbish. It is not just normal pilots who are leaving. We are losing training captains – the guys needed to train replacement cadets and captains. They are leaving in droves.’
Dan Crabb is one of almost 400,000 Ryanair passengers who received an unwelcome email from the airline yesterday.
He and his fiancé Sophie are getting married on Saturday and were due to fly off from London Stansted to Hamburg in December on the first leg of their honeymoon.
They had deliberately booked an early morning flight so they could spend almost two days in the German city, making the most of its Christmas markets.
But Mr Crabb received a text message yesterday and was told to check his email
The email duly informed him that the flight has been cancelled.
He said the next flight from London Stansted is not until the evening, putting a big dampner on the couple’s plans.
The 31 year old bank manager from Sawbridgeworth in Hertfordshire said there may be flights from Gatwick, but would entail an expensive taxi ride for the 60 mile journey.
Like many passengers Mr Crabb says he has lost trust in the airline.
He and his soon-to-be wife are also due to fly back from Marrakesh with Ryanair on the final leg of their honeymoon in January.
But Mr Crabb said Ryanair’s recent track record has made him nervous that that flight will also be cancelled.
He said: ‘This is not the kind of worry we need and is not the best start to a honeymoon. I have massively lost trust in Ryanair. Before you knew that you’d get what you pay for. The understanding was that the service would be pretty poor but you could generally rely on them to get where you want to go. Now that trust has gone’.