London (AFP) - Ryanair on Wednesday said it plans to cancel more flights, affecting around 400,000 customers until March, as it struggles with a shortage of pilots.
The Irish no-frills airline plans to fly 25 fewer aircraft during its winter schedule, hitting less than one percent of its customers but more than doubling the amount of passengers originally affected by a cancellations crisis plaguing Ryanair since mid-September.
In addition, it will operate ten fewer aircraft from April 2018, further affecting its growth plans.
The Dublin-based group said the move would "eliminate all risk of further flight cancellations, because slower growth creates lots of spare aircraft and crews across Ryanair's 86 bases this winter".
The latest announcement will affect 34 routes, including London-Belfast and Hamburg-Oslo.
"While over 99 percent of our 129 million customers will not have been affected by any cancellations or disruptions, we deeply regret any doubt we caused existing customers ...about Ryanair's reliability, or the risk of further cancellations," said chief executive Michael O'Leary.
Ryanair had already canned 2,100 flights in the six weeks to the end of October as it struggled with landing planes on time, reportedly mainly owing to a shortage of pilots.
Weather issues and strikes have also hampered the airline's performance.
The cancellations jeopardised the travel plans of 315,000 customers, but has now been forced to more than double the number of passengers affected.
Ryanair on Wednesday said it had emailed all passengers hit by the latest cancellations, offering them alternative flights or a full refund.
There was no immediate indication of how costly to Ryanair the latest cancellations would be.
The grounding of planes to the end of next month was already set to cost the company 25 million euros ($30 million) -- five million euros of lost profit and 20 million euros in compensation under EU rules -- O'Leary had said.
Ryanair is currently scrapping 40 to 50 flights daily -- "less than two percent" of its flying programme -- to address problems caused also by air traffic control (ATC) delays, strikes and weather disruption.
But the Dublin-based carrier has admitted that it has been hit also by pilots and cabin crew being forced to take outstanding holiday entitlement by the end of the year as part of new company rules.
"For the...Ryanair customers who are unaffected by these (latest) flight cancellations and schedule changes, this slower rate of growth means that from today there is no risk of further roster-related" grounding of planes, the airline added in Wednesday's statement.
