Ryanair decision may cost them up to 53 million EUR in compensations

After messing up with planning pilots‘ holidays schedules, in the next 6 weeks Ryanair announced cancelling from 1680 to 2100 flights. The massive cancellations will affect around 400 thousand passengers. The grand plan was said to fight Ryanair’s low punctuality rate, but the day after, airline spokesman had to admit that it were staff holiday management mistakes what caused cancelations.

After officially announcing that it messed up, Ryanair ignores questions from lost passengers and has only encouraged checking e-mails for coming flight updates, yet thousands of angry travelers express their fury on Twitter and Facebook. Some have complained about ruined vacation plans just 24 hours before flight, while others tweet about being stuck in far-away airports and left waiting for a flight home for the next 2-3 days.

According to Marius Stonkus, the CEO of SKYCOP, “Ryanair for a low fare seems to sell not only budget flights but also poor quality service. Based on customer watchdog Witch? analysis, Ryanair ignores more than half of all customer complaints. Which? revealed that in 2016 Ryanair decision to refuse compensation was wrong in 77% of cases.” One of the worst European airlines in dealing with passenger claims, Ryanair presents another unpleasant surprise.

“With only 80% punctuality rate, Ryanair has first declared that all cancellations are a strategic move which will help to hit the annual punctuality target of 90%. Even if this would be true, such objective would only doom the rest of 10% travelling with Ryanair for being late. Low standards cannot assure high quality and the decision to cancel 400 thousand passengers’ flights while reaching for annual targets and saving costs is an example of bad management, ” says M. Stonkus.

If your flight got cancelled, Ryanair offers options.  Afflicted travelers can choose between a full refund or alternative flight ticket. However, there is no information about the compensation. Under EU law every traveler is entitled for up to €600 compensation for cancelled, delayed or overbooked flight. Thus, apart from alternative flight or a refund, every flight that got cancelled due to Ryanair’s fault should be compensated if the passenger hasn’t been noted about the disruption two weeks prior to the departure.

CEO of international platform fighting for passenger rights, www.skycop.com says, “This Ryanair move may cost them around €53 million in compensations. Taken that airline avoids informing their customers about the compensation, the sum depends solely on the passengers themselves.  Depending on whether they have been informed in prior and flight distance, disturbed travelers can get up to £600 compensations. ”

SKYCOP responds to the situation and plans to send an official letter to Ryanair with their suggestions on how to optimise compensation reimbursement processes. Every day for the next 6 weeks Ryanair will cancel 40-50 flights and office should be ready for promptly accumulating piles of claims. Travelers who will directly turn to Ryanair for compensation should arm with patience and an attacking mindset. In 2016 the airline payed out only a third of eligible compensations. M. Stonkus hopes that after choosing such way of “cost saving” Ryanair at least will deal in proper way with compensations to passengers and reminds that SKYCOP is ready to help the carrier so that such task wouldn’t be become a mission imposable as seems it is for Ryanair usually.