RYANAIR has called on the Civil Aviation Authority to take action against British Airways after a computer glitch left passengers stranded earlier this year.
The Irish airline was responding to the CAA's decision to take enforcement action Ryanair failed to give accurate information to passengers about their rights.
The decision was prompted earlier this week after Ryanair issued a second bout of mass cancellations on 34 routes from November to March 2018, affecting up to 400,000 passengers.
In a statement a Ryanair spokesman said: "Ryanair has replied to the UK CAA letter of September 28, agreeing to meet its requirement for customer clarification on Ryanair’s EU261 obligations, which are in line with those requested by the (Ireland's) Commission for Aviation Regulation.
"Ryanair has called upon the UK CAA to now require UK airlines to comply with these EU261 obligations which the CAA did not apply to British Airways in May this year, when a computer meltdown stranded hundreds of thousands of British citizens and visitors at London Heathrow and many other airports, with no apparent action taken by the CAA in respect of re-accommodation or enforcement against British Airways."
Ryanair also said they met with the Irish Commission for Aviation Regulation and agreed to implement a series of steps to address the CAR’s requirements to ensure that all customers affected by the airline’s recent rostering related flight cancellations are fully aware of their EU261 rights and entitlements.
This includes full refunds, or re-accommodation onto other Ryanair flights or other comparable transport options with reimbursement of reasonable out of pocket expenses.
There were 2,100 flight cancellations in September and October, and 18,000 schedule changes from November 2017 to March 2018.
A sample of the Ryanair distributed to Ryanair passengers today.Passengers offered a full refund will be given of an unused flight sector and associated fees.
If the disrupted flight is their outbound sector, customers will also be offered a full refund of the return sector.
In terms of re-routing, Ryanair will first move the customer to the next available Ryanair flight on the same route.
But if this option is not available on the same or next day, then the customer will be moved to the next available Ryanair flight from or to a suitable alternative airport, for example: Luton or Gatwick in the case of Stansted.
If this option is not also available, then passengers will be offered re-accommodation on any one of their agreed disruption partner airlines to their destination which includes Easyjet, Jet2, Vueling, Cityjet, Aer Lingus, Norwegian or Eurowings airlines.
If none of these options are available then Ryanair will offer to re-accommodate the passenger on any 'comparable alternative transport' including a flight, train, bus or car hire, flight, train, bus or car hire.
The cost of the comparable transport ticket will be assessed on a case by case basis.
Ryanair’s Kenny Jacobs said: “We apologise again sincerely for the disruption and inconvenience our rostering failure has caused some of our customers.
"Over the past week we have refunded or re-accommodated over 97 per cent of the customers affected by the September 18 cancellations.
"This week we will have re-accommodated or refunded over 90 per cent of the 400,000 customers who were notified of schedule changes on flights between November 2017 and March 2018.
"In addition, every single affected customer has received a travel voucher for a €40 one way flight (€80 return) for travel in October to March.
"We have restored the reliability and punctuality of our flight operations. Over the past seven days we have operated over 15,000 flights with over 96 per cent of our first wave morning departures operating on time, or with zero flight cancellations.
"We have taken on extra customer service staff and are moving now to process and expedite all EU261 claims from affected customers.
"We are committed to processing all such claims within 21 days of receipt and hope to have all such claims settled before the end of October.”
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