On Friday, RyanAir canceled more than 160 flights across Europe over this weekend.
Why? Because employees need to catch up on vacation.
The airline said that it will cancel 40 to 50 flights per day for the next six weeks so that it can improve its "punctuality."
Further along in its official statement, RyanAir notes that "Air Traffic Control (ATC) capacity delays and strikes, weather disruptions and the impact of increased holiday allocations to pilots and cabin crew" are at fault for the delays.
Part of the problem, it appears, is that RyanAir is in the process of a nine-month transition period, moving the airline's holiday year from April to March ao as to fall in line with the calendar year, January to December. In order to ensure that all employees receive sufficient amount of their vacation time, cancellations will need to occur.
The official statement says that: "Ryanair has operated at record schedule and traffic levels during the peak summer months of July (12.6 million guests) and August (12.7 million guests) but has a backlog of crew leave which must be allocated before December 31, 2017, in order to switch to a calendar leave year (as required by the IAA) from January 1, 2018, onwards."
Punctuality has been an issue for the airline.
On-time arrivals have dipped below 80 percent over the last two weeks. Before that, RyanAir's performance was around 90 percent. The airline blames the decrease on a variety of reasons, including thunderstorms, strikes in France, air traffic control restrictions and more.
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"We have operated a record schedule (and traffic numbers) during the peak summer months of July and August but must now allocate annual leave to pilots and cabin crew in September and October (while still running the bulk of our summer schedule)," said Robin Kiely, RyanAir's head of communication.
"This increased leave at a time of ATC capacity delays and strikes, has severely reduced our on-time performance over the past two weeks to under 80 percent," added Kiely. "By canceling less than 2 percent of our flying program over the next six weeks, (until our winter schedule starts in early November), we can improve the operational resilience of our schedules and restore punctuality to our annualized target of 90 percent."
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