Ryanair bosses’ PR nosedive... yet again

LAST autumn we had the Ryanair rostering debacle, a situation entirely of the airline’s own making and one that quickly turned into a PR disaster for the company because, when it came to trying to right that wrong, Ryanair failed to communicate with its customers in any kind of satisfactory manner.

It took the carrier days to release the upcoming altered flight schedules, and even when it did issue such information, it did so in a drip-feed fashion so that passengers were left wondering for far too long whether their flight would be operating or not on their given day of travel.

It simply wasn’t good enough and was so poorly handled that the only good expected to come from it was that the company would at least have learned from such a mistake. Unfortunately, this has not happened. Now we have an industrial dispute at Ryanair, a dispute where there are obviously two opposing viewpoints, and a situation where, undoubtedly, both unions and management have questions to answer. It’s up to the two sides to sort out their differences – and fast – so that customers will not have their travel arrangements disrupted through this summer holiday season.

However, in the midst of the current conflict, and until a resolution is arrived at, it behoves Ryanair to inform the public of exactly how the land lies when it comes to next week’s flight schedules. To say, as it did in its statement yesterday, that it will provide more information next Tuesday – just 48 hours ahead of the intended strike day – is both dismissive of passengers’ needs and completely unreasonable.

Furthermore, to casually mention that 93% of its passengers will be unaffected by the strike is both disingenuous and misleading.

That may well be the passenger percentage flying with Ryanair from airports outside Ireland, but it is the 7% who account for Ryanair’s Irish passengers who are the ones pertinent to this issue.

That people have booked their family holiday months in advance are now due to fly on Thursday, July 12, and are to be kept on tenterhooks for almost another week, is utterly unacceptable. And it looks like yet another PR disaster for Michael O’Leary’s airline.