Regional flights affected by six weeks of cancellations

Ryanair has revealed which flights will be affected in the next three days by a wave of cancellations it has blamed on its efforts to improve punctuality.

The airline has said it is grounding 40-50 flights a day for the next six weeks, but was slow to make public the list of affected routes. It initially advised customers “your flight is operating as usual unless you receive an email”.

On Sunday it published the list of flights being cancelled on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday this week.

Birmingham flights to and from Madrid on Monday and Wednesday have been affected.

Manchester flights to and from Dublin, Hamburg and Krakow will not take off on Monday. On Tuesday, flights to and from Faro, and on Wednesday return flights to Dublin have been cancelled.

The full list of affected flights is available at https://www.ryanair.com/ie/en/useful-info/help-centre/travel-updates/flight-cancellations7.

Ryanair’s punctuality had fallen below 80% in the first two weeks of September, which it attributed to “a combination of ATC [air traffic control] capacity delays and strikes, weather disruptions and the impact of increased holiday allocations to pilots and cabin crew”.

The airline is moving its holiday year from April-March to January-December which has created “a backlog of crew leave”.

Ryanair’s Robin Kiely said: “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).

“We apologise sincerely to the small number of customers affected by these cancellations, and will be doing our utmost to arrange alternative flights and/or full refunds for them.”