Ryanair Cancellations

[Perik Omo]

I heard this morning that they are cancelling upwards of 50 flights a day, to improve timekeeping they say, but an insider says that staff have been leaving in droves and they are now very short. The other thing is that you won't know if your flight is cancelled until a maximum of 24 hours before but more often with just a few hours notice, this means there is no hope of re-scheduling just in case and the only option is to cancel early and lose your money. It's a bl**dy game of Russian Roulette with your plans.

We have family (family of 5) coming to the UK from NZ and we have paid for them to come to France by Ryanair from Stansted for a couple of days before they fly off back to NZ so there would be zero chance of making alternative arrangements at such short notice so we are faced with booking them to come over by Eurostar to Paris then SNCF to Limoges with a trek across Paris with 3 young children and shed load of luggage, Oh, and we'll obviously lose our money we've already paid for the flights.

Bl**dy bast**rds, grrrrrrrrrrr.....

[Perik Omo]

Yes, you are right of course but it just made me mad as hell as a lot of planning has had to take place to make the visit possible in the first place.

[Perik Omo]

hairyben said:

Although sounds like a lot its probably a small % in the scheme, Ive flown ryanair a number of times and aside from running habitually late theres been no issue. Anyway London has 5 airports and a couple more nearby and theres the tunnel - Can alt plans not be made if and when a situation occurs?

They will have a hire car that has to dropped at Stansted which adds another complication, the only flights into Limoges are Stansted, East Midlands, Manchester or Flybe from Southampton none of which are feasible given that they have to go to Stansted to drop the pre-paid hire car. Short notice travel changes are really difficult when you have 5 suitcases and three very young children. The only option seems to be to cancel and lose the money and try and book Luton to Bordeaux with easyjet which is 2 and a half hour drive away from us plus they would have to get from Stansted to Luton or try and change the car drop-off to Luton, again incurring extra costs. The train option is Stansted to Liverpool Street, underground to St Pancreas, Eurostar to Paris, across Paris to Gare Austerlitz and train to Limoges all with the little-uns and luggage so can't really see that as feasible.

[Perik Omo]

It's not for another 2 weeks yet but it's the uncertainty and short notice of cancellation that is the problem, a short notice cancellation is just not any good given the circumstances, if the notification was longer then we would maybe have time to make alternative arrangements (none of which would be ideal).

[Perik Omo]

djc206 said:

You could hedge your bets and book Ryanair Stansted to Bordeaux as a backup. Chances are one of them will definitely go!

We've booked East Midlands for the day before as a backup, if they take that one then maybe Ryanair will cancel the Stansted one and we can get the refund but if they both operate then we've lost one lot of fares.