The airline has been left with insufficient numbers of available pilots, which has led to it cancelling hundreds of flights throughout September and October – around 1 in 50 of all its trips. This move will affect around 400,000 passengers and lead to compensation claims of, by Ryanair’s estimation, up to €20 million.
As a result, Ryanair is offering a €12,000 bonus to staff who are already on leave to return to work, as part of its attempts to resolve the rostering issues.
It is an expensive mistake, and one that could be damaging to the airline’s reputation.
Why has this happened?
It’s been reported that changes to the way Ryanair organises its holiday year have left the airline with a backlog of staff leave, meaning there is a shortage of pilots on standby. In turn, this has meant that any minor disruptions to flights – such as problems with air traffic control capacity, strikes, or bad weather – have been causing knock-on delays, as the airline has not had the flexibility it needs from back-up crews. The airline’s solution has been to cancel a small percentage of flights, thus presumably creating the backup necessary to ensure the rest of the flight schedule can run as normal.
Ryanair has fallen into the classic absence management trap faced by all aviation companies. Thanks to a workforce that is spread across the globe and has irregular shift patterns, managing time off can be complex. Issues such as leave backlogs, holiday clashes and high absence rates add to the difficulty.
These issues are magnified when you use manual administrative processes, as it makes it much more difficult for an HR department to plan leave and organise cover, meaning problems can occur. Other potential issues include:
- A lack of visibility into who’s on holiday when, which can lead to too many people away at once
- Managers failing to log sick leave, which lets absence rates rise unchecked
- Lengthy holiday approval processes that frustrate employees
- No detailed absence reports
- Difficulty in spotting trends and issues that must be dealt with to ensure enough staff are available
It seems likely that Ryanair has found itself facing one or more of the problems above so, given that it runs its operation with so little slack, it has unsurprisingly run into trouble.
Could it have been prevented?
Could Ryanair have avoided this situation?
In a word, yes.
It’s possible to avoid these issues – even with such a tight business model as Ryanair’s – by using online absence management software.
A good absence management tool, such as aCloud TeamSeer, allows you to record and monitor everything through one online system. This means you can track absence trends and see quickly who is on leave and when. By showing who is already away when you book or validate time off, the software eliminates absence clashes.
It is also simple to use – for both administrators and operational staff. Because the system is cloud-based, it can be securely accessed from anywhere with an internet connection, making it easy for your staff to log and record time off - no matter the country or time zone in which they are working. Also, everyone is synced via Outlook and aware of who is working, on leave or sick at any one time.
In short, aCloud TeamSeer means potentially disruptive absence situations can be spotted and acted upon before they cause problems for you and your customers.
If only Ryanair had known this…