Ryanair to cancel more than 30 flights over next six weeks

Irish low-cost airline Ryanair revealed plans to cancel over 30 flights daily for the next six weeks after admitting chaos in the planning of pilot holidays.

The airline announced through its Facebook page on Saturday that it would cancel between 40-50 flights per day for the next six weeks because they had "messed up in the planning of pilot holidays", coupled with a backlog of crew leave, air traffic control strikes and weather disruptions.

However, thus far it had only published a list of cancelled flights until Wednesday.

Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary apologised for the inconvenience caused: "We sincerely apologise and we are working very hard at the moment to make sure we finalise the list of flight cancellations."

Mr O'Leary added: "It is clearly a mess, but in the context of an operation where we operate nearly 2,500 flights every day it is reasonably small."

"But that doesn't in any way take away the inconvenience we have caused to people whose flights have been cancelled."

"The action has affected hundreds of thousands of passengers, who have complained of being left stranded and of their holiday plans going "up in smoke"."