Ryanair passengers face yet more chaos as pilots threaten mass 'sick day' in protest

Ryan Air with a fleet of 300 planes is providing cheaper travel facilities to thousands of people .Frustrated Ryanair pilots are reportedly plotting a protest against their 'poor working conditions' by carrying out a mass 'sick day' walkout - in a move which threatens to heap only more misery on passengers.
Ryanair has already cut as many as 2,000 flights and will leave up to 400,000 passengers stranded over the next six weeks - and revealed today that just under half have new seats and one in five have been handed refunds.  
Today it emerged that air crew across Europe could start a slew of new cancellations over alleged poor conditions working for the budget airline, whose share price was down two per cent today.
One senior Ryanair pilot told: 'Pilots are now gathering and arranging meetings around Europe. Serious flight crew unrest exists with the possibility of crew action against company, including mass sick days and working to rule. 
'MailOnline has been inundated with calls and emails from customers who have been left stranded, broke and bereft because of the airline's cancellation crisis. 
Pilot's are sick of threatening management conduct. Michael O'Leary fabricates his pilots are well treated - if that's the case why do they all leave so fast - 719 in the past year' - a figure used by unions.   
Passengers have described the stress of not knowing how to get home and spending huge sums of money after getting marooned by Ryanair.
Stella Scott, 69, was sent a text six hours before her Malaga flight and was offered seats to Bristol nine days later, leaving her family including three-year-old grandson marooned. 
Lynda Lancaster's granddaughter Rhiannon Hawkins, 19, 'cried herself to sleep' after she was forced to cut her week's holiday in France short having spent £25 waiting for an answer on Ryanair's helpline. 
The airline responded to claims that calls were costing £25 by saying: 'This £25 call cost claim is untrue. Our UK numbers are not premium rate numbers. 
'Our reservations number costs 13p per minute and our other UK number is a low-cost local rate number. Our chat and email contact channels are completely free'. 
Mark Adkins was stuck in Spain with his wife, 11-month old baby and 77-year-old disabled father, who was forced to 'crawl' on to a train from Valencia to Barcelona to get a new flight.
He told MailOnline: 'Ryanair have ruined my son's first holiday and probably my dad's last one'. 
'When boarding the flight at Girona airport, our priority seats at the front were taken away and we were spread out at the back, my dad again struggled to get to his seat. 
'I want everyone to know that Ryanair don't offer any care or consideration for vulnerable passengers like my disabled dad and baby son'. 
Today consumer group Which claimed that the airline has broken EU laws over compensation, because there is no sign of the word anywhere in an email sent to affected customers.
Instead there is a link to click if they want to learn more about 'passenger rights'.  
Which? spokesman Alex Neill said: 'Ryanair's approach to informing affected passengers about compensation falls woefully short. 
'It is legally required to spell out compensation rules when a flight is cancelled and, in our view, have so far failed to do that, leaving passengers hunting around for information.
'This is another blow for the thousands of passengers who have already had to endure huge inconvenience as a result of this fiasco. 
'The airline must now automatically compensate eligible passengers without them having to go through the additional hassle of making a claim.'  Ryanair said customers affected by the cancellations received an email on Monday advising them of their flight changes and offering alternative flights, refunds and EU261 notices.The airline said it expected to have re-accommodated more than 175,000 customers on other Ryanair flights and to have processed refunds for more than 20 per cent of those affected by close of business on Wednesday.
Spokesman Kenny Jacobs said: 'We apologise sincerely to each and every one of the 315,000 customers whose original flights were cancelled over a six week period in September and October, while we work to resolve this short term rostering failure.
'We have taken on extra customer service teams to speed up the rate at which we accommodate and action alternative flight requests or refund applications. We expect to have the vast majority of these completed by the end of this week.
'The vast majority of these requests are being dealt with online, but as our call centres and chat lines are extremely busy we ask affected customers to bear with us as we do everything we can to respond to their requests and try to resolve any problems we have created for them, for which we again sincerely apologise.' 
Boss Michael O'Leary appears not to have spoken since Monday's extraordinary press conference where apologised for the 'mess' his company had caused customers. 
Ryanair have now offered pilots a £12,000 bonus for ten days work to get more planes in the air.  
Pilots and First Officers have been promised up to £1,200-a-day if they fly when they are meant to be on holiday over the next six weeks. 
Only those who have flown less than 800 hours this year are eligible for the cash - to avoid breaching European regulations that limit pilots’ flying hours to 900 per year to October 31. 
But it appears that many pilots are set to refuse the money, piling more pressure on bosses.  
Some victims have told MailOnline how they have been left sobbing after spending £20 or more on calls to its premium rate helpline - if they can get through at all.
Many have scrambled to spend up to £1,500 on flights with rivals after being unable to find a free replacement flight until up to two weeks later.
Stella Scott, 69, was sent a cancellation text as she prepared to leave for Malaga Airport with her husband Robert, 61, daughter Abby, 36, son-in-law Dave, 34, and grandson Luke, three, and was offered a flight home nine days later. 
She told MailOnline: 'It was only six hours before our flight to Bristol and we thrown into a complete panic about it. Ryanair are terrible - the next flight they could offer us was nine days later. 
'My son-in-law had to be in work the next morning so was forced to fly without us to Luton and find his way back to Wales from there.
'The rest of us booked for £82 each to fly to Birmingham with BA, we then had to pay £62 to hire a car to complete our journey to Bristol. Unbfortunately we have some flights booked with them in October - but we will think twice about using them again now'.  The airline said it expected to have re-accommodated more than 175,000 customers on other Ryanair flights and to have processed refunds for more than 20 per cent of those affected by close of business on Wednesday.
Spokesman Kenny Jacobs said: 'We apologise sincerely to each and every one of the 315,000 customers whose original flights were cancelled over a six week period in September and October, while we work to resolve this short term rostering failure.
'We have taken on extra customer service teams to speed up the rate at which we accommodate and action alternative flight requests or refund applications. We expect to have the vast majority of these completed by the end of this week.
'The vast majority of these requests are being dealt with online, but as our call centres and chat lines are extremely busy we ask affected customers to bear with us as we do everything we can to respond to their requests and try to resolve any problems we have created for them, for which we again sincerely apologise.' 
Boss Michael O'Leary appears not to have spoken since Monday's extraordinary press conference where apologised for the 'mess' his company had caused customers. 
Ryanair have now offered pilots a £12,000 bonus for ten days work to get more planes in the air.  
Pilots and First Officers have been promised up to £1,200-a-day if they fly when they are meant to be on holiday over the next six weeks. 
Only those who have flown less than 800 hours this year are eligible for the cash - to avoid breaching European regulations that limit pilots’ flying hours to 900 per year to October 31. 
But it appears that many pilots are set to refuse the money, piling more pressure on bosses.  
Some victims have told MailOnline how they have been left sobbing after spending £20 or more on calls to its premium rate helpline - if they can get through at all.
Many have scrambled to spend up to £1,500 on flights with rivals after being unable to find a free replacement flight until up to two weeks later.
Stella Scott, 69, was sent a cancellation text as she prepared to leave for Malaga Airport with her husband Robert, 61, daughter Abby, 36, son-in-law Dave, 34, and grandson Luke, three, and was offered a flight home nine days later. 
She told MailOnline: 'It was only six hours before our flight to Bristol and we thrown into a complete panic about it. Ryanair are terrible - the next flight they could offer us was nine days later. 
'My son-in-law had to be in work the next morning so was forced to fly without us to Luton and find his way back to Wales from there.
'The rest of us booked for £82 each to fly to Birmingham with BA, we then had to pay £62 to hire a car to complete our journey to Bristol. Unbfortunately we have some flights booked with them in October - but we will think twice about using them again now'.  
(PILOT)A Ryanair pilot horrified passengers after allegedly joking that their flight had been cancelled minutes before take-off.
Some customers had been stuck in Portugal for up to three days when the unnamed worker thought it was funny to claim they faced further delays.
Ryanair will strand up to 400,000 people until the end of October because of their catastrophic staffing crisis.
Witness Lisa Roberts was one of the people waiting for the 5.05pm flight to Manchester from Faro yesterday and said she was appalled.
She told MailOnline: 'We were waiting to board the plane and the crew walked past us getting on the plane and he [the pilot] just shouted 'your flight's been cancelled' and just started laughing. 
'I was shocked. It was disgusting. People on that flight had been delayed three days.
'My brother was stood next to me and said 'Did he think that was funny? It really wasn't'.'
She added: 'The woman I was sat next to was delayed for three days - she told me they sent her a text', and believes Ryanair must investigate the incident.Stephen and Helen Smith, and Helen's parents Stephen and Debbie Luckett, were appalled by their treatment when they turned up at Alicante airport on Saturday morning to fly back to Manchester after a two-week holiday in Spain.
They had to pay almost £1,000 for seats on an alternative flight with Vueling to Edinburgh on Saturday evening, a hotel and a hire car to drive home to Stockport on Sunday. Mr Smith has vowed never to fly with Ryanair again.
The family was not contacted to say their flight had been cancelled before setting out for the airport on Saturday and last night had still not received any official communication from the company.
Stephen, 33, an operations manager for an energy firm, said: 'Ryanair did nothing for us. The only thing they could offer was a flight seven days later.
'We had to take matters into our own hands - we couldn't afford to stay another seven days and we had to get back to work. We found the quickest way of getting back.
'We remained calm and had the facility and ability to sort out this for ourselves with credit cards.
'But some people were distraught - they were unable to do what we did and they were stranded.'
Leanne Wall was supposed to travel to Ibiza with 21 friends and family members from Manchester Airport last Tuesday.
But the 34-year-old said she was devastated to receive a series of text messages from budget airline Ryanair telling her their flight, FR2626, had been axed because of an air traffic control strike.
The party eventually made it to the Spanish holiday island after splitting up and booking new flights via Newcastle, Palma, Madrid and Barcelona with different airlines costing around £200 each.
But they missed a day of the hen do and the group also lost money from a missed booking at Ibiza's Ocean Beach club.
On Monday Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary hinted he would seek to strike a deal with pilots as he took responsibility for the rostering 'mess' that could see as many as 2,000 flights cancelled and leave up to 400,000 passengers stranded over the next six weeks.
Yesterday, a memo sent to pilots by the airline's chief operations officer, Michael Hickey, offered a £12,000 bonus to staff who had already been assigned a month off as part of attempts to resolve the rostering issues.
The memo is believed to be an attempt to plug the holes in Ryanair's flight schedule and ease the forced cancellation of up to 50 flights per day.
It read: 'To avoid further cancellations, we are requesting between one and two blocks of five days from every pilot who has already been assigned their month off.' 
However, although the work takes place in October this year, the payment will not be made until November 1, 2018, in what looks like an attempt by the airline to retain its pilots.
Mr Hickey states: 'All current pilots... who remain operating Ryanair aircraft between September and 31st October 2018 will receive a once-off €12,000/£12,000 gross bonus for captains and €6,000/£6,000 for first officers in November 2018.' 
Those who accept the offer but leave the company before October 31 next year will not receive the bonus.
Pilots who have four or more unauthorised absences in that period will also lose the payment. 
Part of the disruptions at Ryanair have been blamed on a number of the carrier's pilots being poached for jobs at Norwegian Air.
Some union figures claim more than 700 Ryanair pilots left for rivals this year.
Ryanair has played down these reports but has admitted that at least 140 of their employees have left for the rival company.
When contacted for comment yesterday, Ryanair responded: 'We don't comment on rumour or speculation, especially when it originates from competitor pilot unions.'
Passengers desperately trying to rebook flights have been left incensed at a second round of fees for checking in bags and allocated seating.
The budget airline's response to the chaos triggered by its decision at the weekend to cancel more than 2,000 flights was last night described as an 'omni-shambles' as its call centre struggled to cope with furious customers.After 50 flights a day for the next six weeks were cancelled – affecting about 400,000 people – travellers trying to re-book complained of being unable to get through to an adviser or of long waits on hold on a premium rate number. Others complained the 'live chat' service on its website was not working.The airline charges £2 per person for standard seats booked online, rising to £11 for certain priority seats, and at least £25 for each item of baggage.
Graham Walsh, from Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, said: 'Ryanair charge again for seat allocation that you've already paid on the cancelled flight.'
In another chaotic day, Ryanair, the airline promised to refund these customers. Chief marketing officer Kenny Jacobs said: 'We are aware of this issue and any customer who has been double charged for bags or allocated seating will be refunded.'
The airline also came under fire from passengers who couldn't get through to its advisers, or were forced to wait on hold on its premium-rate helpline, racking up bills at 68p a minute. One passenger tweeted: 'To anyone trying to call Ryanair – dig deep. I spent 15 minutes in a queue and it cost me £11.'
Another named Charlene wrote: 'Ryanair, you cancel my flight tomorrow then I can't get in contact! No link works and your phone and live chat are down!'
Ryanair insisted its chat service and call centres were 'operating as normal' but with 'higher volumes' of calls. But consumer campaigner Martin Lewis criticised the airline's reaction to the crisis. He said: 'Ryanair's response has been an omni-shambles, but it could never have been anything else.
'The company is simply not set up to deal with this.'
The airline is battling to cope with the fallout after cancelling 2,024 flights, which it blamed on 'messing up' its holiday rota for pilots, resulting in too many taking breaks at the end of the year. Yesterday they were fresh tales of misery from passengers stranded abroad.
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