Is this a business or a joke? Ryanair will cancel up to 50 flights a day for six weeks!

The “This is Odd!” section of the Dublin Event Guide (for Free Events) is a place where I highlight a whole variety of odd things that happen around us. Usually (but not always) there is some connection with Ireland, considering that the 24,000 subscribers, 21,000 web app users and 30,000 website visitors are mainly Irish, living in Ireland or have a close connection with Ireland. I also prefer to vary the topics across all aspects of our lives and it is very rare that the same small areas will be covered two weeks in a row.

This is, however, an exception and for the second week it is Ryanair that wins in the “odd” competition. You seriously have to wonder if they are running a business or if this is a – very profitable – joke when you find out what they now are up to.

We are used to their total disrespect for customers when it comes to seat allocations and baggage charge changes and refund policies and to be honest, we endure a LOT under the excuse-umbrella that without Ryanair we would pay hell of a lot more for air travel and that after all they are a commercial company whose job it is to maximise the revenue.

Until now, though, we thought that they know what they are doing and that they might be – in our eyes – mean spirited and customer friendly, but that we at least can rely on their professionalism when it comes to their core business, which is bringing people from A to B safely and reliably.

But on Friday it emerged that Ryanair will cancel up to 50 (!!) flights per day for the next six weeks!! Maybe you think 50 is not a lot, considering that they undertake 2500 flights per day and a Ryanair spokesman quickly already pointed out that only 2% of flights are affected. But I don’t care how many percent of flights are affected if I am the one beings stranded. On Friday (15 Sept) 82 flights were cancelled and on Saturday (16 Sept) a total of 80 flights will be affected. That is a LOT!

What happens if this one little flight is the feeder flight that brings you to an airport from which you plan to take a flight to South America? You miss that and your whole holiday is gone! – Or what if that little flight was the ONE flight that will bring you to your weekend away in Spain? It’s not good enough that you can fly a day later if you only had planned a weekend away.

And even worse! Ryanair didn’t even have the decency to explain why 82 flights were cancelled until Friday evening!

And the reason? Holidays!! They don’t care in the slightest about your plans because they have to accommodate Ryanair staff holidays. And why was that not anticipated? Because Ryanair changed – without any need or emergency – the holiday year from April to March to a new January to December system. Knowing how inflexible they are with all their rules when it comes to check-in and luggage, you can bet that they are the worst when it comes to holiday flexibility with their own staff.

So in the end Ryanair created this mess themselves and we as customers have to suffer for it.

You really wonder if they are running a business or if this is all a joke to them?