Spanish flights hit as Ryanair axe 40 to 50 flights a day for next six weeks

IF you thought things couldn’t get worse in the skies above Spain with the French air traffic controllers strike earlier this week  and then the threat of Spanish airport workers walking out for 25 one-day stoppages then you were wrong.

With less than 24 hours notice low-cost airline Ryanair has announced it will cancel 40-50 flights a day until the end of October ‘to improve its system-wide punctuality’.

The carrier blames air traffic control capacity delays and strikes, weather disruptions and the impact of increased holiday allocations to pilots and cabin crew on their punctuality rate that has fallen below 80% in the first two weeks of September.

Ryanair claim that the cancellations amount to less  than 2% of its over 2,500 daily flights – but that will be of no consolation to passengers who were due to travel with them on cancelled flights.

One passenger, stuck In Benidorm took to Twitter to vent his frustration…

“Your flights have been cancelled, click here for your refund” oh cheers @Ryanair , I’m only homeless on streets in Benidorm with no flight

— Corey Towell (@coreytowell98) September 14, 2017

The airline’s spokesman Robin Kiely said, “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.”

But in something of a public relations own-goal the budget carrier chose the same day to announce a ‘Massive 100 days to Christmas’ seat sale with 50,000 seats at €9.99 for travel from October-December.

The list of cancelled flights to/from Spain on 16 September 2017 are:

FR7257 Madrid / Dublin T1
FR7256 Dublin T1 / Madrid
FR6875 Dublin T1 / Barcelona El Prat
FR6874 Barcelona El Prat / Dublin T1
FR6423 Bologna / Valencia
FR6422 Valencia / Bologna
FR5992 London Stansted / Madrid
FR5991 Madrid / London Stansted
FR4007 Manchester / Alicante
FR4006 Alicante / Manchester
FR3022 Blagnac / Madrid
FR3021 Madrid / Blagnac
FR2153 Alicante / Birmingham
FR2152 Birmingham / Alicante
FR2020 Lanzarote / Madrid
FR2019 Madrid / Lanzarote