Ryanair passengers are being warned that hundreds of flights will be cancelled due to a global shortage of new aircraft.
Boeing is an American company that designs, manufactures, and sells aeroplanes worldwide.
According to Time Out, the airline planned to expand its fleet with 30 Boeing 737 aircraft between March and June next year. However, this plan could fail due to production delays at the manufacturer.
The hold-ups result from strikes by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, Boeing’s largest trade union.
Since mid-September, around 33,000 Boeing workers in Washington and Oregon have been on strike over pay disputes, halting production of the company’s 737 Max, 767, and 777 jets.
Ryanair’s chief executive, Michael O’Leary, spoke on this issue to Reuters and shared: “The big issue for Ryanair is we’re due 30 aircraft in March, April, May and June of next year, and how many of those will we get? We’re going to walk back our traffic growth for next year because I don’t think we’re going to get all those 30 aircraft.”
He continued: “We want to avoid next year what we had this year. We had geared up, we crewed up the 50 aircraft, and then we only got 30…We were overcrowded, overstaffed. We took a significant cost penalty this year.”
Michael has warned that further flights could be cancelled if aviation taxes are raised in the government’s upcoming budget. The airline has already cut 12 per cent off its capacity to protest increased taxes in Germany.
Travel correspondent Simon Calder, at the Independent, said: “Given the number of taxes that Labour promised not to raise, air passenger duty looks certain to increase in the Budget.
“One of several bizarre anti-rail decisions by Rishi Sunak was to halve the rate of APD for domestic flights in the UK – chiefly benefitting airlines and their passengers between Edinburgh and London to the detriment of train operators.
“Reversing that decision, perhaps with special treatment for Northern Ireland given the absence of fast terrestrial alternatives, makes good sense – as does removing the strange exemption from APD that Inverness enjoys.”
While no cancellations have been confirmed, holidaymakers are advised to monitor their bookings. In other news, Ryanair’s passengers are facing excessive flight delays today, Saturday, October 19, caused by European ATC staff shortages.
On its website, the company apologised and said: “On Saturday, 19 October, Ryanair’s first wave departures were again delayed due to ATC “staff shortages. “These repeated flight delays due to ATC mismanagement are unacceptable.
“We apologise to our passengers for these repeated ATC flight delays which are deeply regrettable but beyond Ryanair’s control. We encourage passengers to visit atcruinedourholiday.com and demand that the EU Commission take urgent action to improve Europe’s ATC system.”