Ryanair cancels flight to restore punctuality levels

Europe’s largest LCC, Ryanair, will cancel up to 50 flights each day over the next six weeks as it seeks to recover from a dip in punctuality levels.

The Ireland-based airline, which said it normally has a punctuality record of around 90%, has seen this fall to below 80% over the past two weeks.

The drop has been caused by a combination of factors—air traffic control capacity problems and strikes; storm-related weather disruptions; and the impact of increased holiday allocations to pilots and cabin crew as the LCC moves to allocate annual leave during a nine-month transition period. The last measure is being undertaken as the airline moves its holiday year from the financial year (which runs from April to March) to the calendar year from Jan.1, 2018.

The airline has a backlog of crew leave that must be allocated before Dec. 31, 2017, in order to switch to a calendar leave year, as required by Irish aviation regulator IAA.

By reducing its scheduled flying program over the next six weeks, Ryanair aims to create additional standby aircraft, which will help restore on-time performance. 

The airline apologized to affected passengers and said they would be contacted with either an offer of alternative flights or a fare refund.

“We have operated a record schedule [and traffic numbers] during the peak summer months of July and August, but must now allocate annual leave to pilots and cabin crew in September and October [while still running the bulk of our summer schedule],” spokesman Robin Kiely said.

“This increased leave, at a time of ATC capacity delays and strikes, has severely reduced our on-time performance over the past two weeks to under 80%. By canceling less than 2% of our flying program over the next six weeks, [until our winter schedule starts in early November] we can improve the operational resilience of our schedules and restore punctuality to our annualized target of 90%.”