Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary at the airline’s AGM in Dublin yesterday

RTE reports:

Ryanair Chief Executive Michael O’Leary has personally apologised to the airline’s workforce for reputational damage caused by what he described as the “mess” over flight cancellations.

Mr O’Leary has also pledged to meet all Employee Representative Councils over the coming weeks to discuss their grievances.

In a broadcast to staff over an internal channel, he said management were sorry for visiting the crisis on their frontline teams, including pilots, cabin crew, check-in staff and customer service personnel, and praised their work in recent days.

…He said Ryanair had not understood that rostering numbers were low – and had certainly mismanaged the allocation of the four-week blocks of leave to pilots in September and October when they were still running the summer schedule.

He told staff that management were being assured during the summer that they had enough pilots when they clearly did not have enough to be able to allocate leave during those months.

He confirmed that Ryanair will be writing to pilots over the coming days asking those allocated a four-week block of annual leave in October, November or December to please work one of those four weeks.

He pledged to protect the other three weeks of annual leave, and allocate the fourth week later in the year.

…Meanwhile the pilots’ deadline for Mr O’Leary to respond to their demand for negotiations on better contracts has expired.

So far 55 of Ryanair’s 86 bases have rejected Ryanair’s offer of additional pay and deferred bonuses to give back leave.

The next step by either management or pilots remains unclear.

O’Leary apologises to Ryanair staff over ‘cancellation’ mess (RTE)

Rollingnews

Update:

Eek.

A full page advertisement taken out by the Allied Pilots Association in tomorrow’s Irish Times weekend edition.