The CEO of the Society for the Promotion of Foreign Affairs of Lanzarote (SPEL), Héctor Fernández, has described the cancellation of Ryanair flights as "bad news", which will also affect the island with eight suspended flights in October. However, Fernández stated on Radio Lanzarote-Onda Cero that the company "will try to minimize the impact as much as possible".
The eight canceled flights in Lanzarote connected the island with Madrid, specifically on Sundays 1, 8, 15 and 22 of October. In all cases, the flight that took off at 6:45 a.m. from Madrid and the return flight that was scheduled to depart from the island at 9:10 a.m. have been suspended, although Héctor Fernández affirms that the Ryanair delegate in Lanzarote informed them on Monday that "they were trying to relocate the passengers" and that "they will try to minimize the damage as much as possible".
In addition, the CEO of SPEL has emphasized that what is going to be affected "is only one weekly flight out of the 100 that Ryanair has per week" with Lanzarote. "1% is what it will affect," specified Héctor Fernández, who also recalled that the company operates on Sundays "a second frequency in the afternoon." "We have learned that Ryanair will try to make cancellations on routes that have a second or third frequency per day to try to relocate those passengers and in the case of Lanzarote that premise is met," said the SPEL counselor, who although he assured that he found out about the cancellations "through the press", pointed out that that same day he was able to speak "with the contact in Dublin" of Ryanair and with the company's delegate in Lanzarote.
"The delegate told us that they were trying to relocate and that with the compensation that is being paid to the passengers they were going to try to minimize the impact as much as possible," insisted Héctor Fernández, who nevertheless pointed out that this Tuesday Turismo Lanzarote was going to have a meeting with Iberia Express in which they would address "this issue to see if they could assume it by increasing the frequencies they have with Madrid."
"The company itself is the one affected"
It was on Monday when Ryanair announced 2,000 cancellations planned until the end of October, which included connections with Lanzarote, affecting 315,000 passengers. "We messed up with the pilots' vacations," said Ryanair's president, Michael O'Leary, denying that they lacked pilots, as numerous media pointed out, which indicated that Norgewian had hired 140 pilots who previously worked for the Irish 'low cost' airline throughout this year.
"The entry of Norgewian is unbalancing Ryanair's strategy in transoceanic, domestic flights, in its positioning in El Prat, even in the labor field. It is true that the company has not officially given that argument, but yesterday it suffered a setback on the London Stock Exchange with a loss of 2.4", Héctor Fernández pointed out on Radio Lanzarote-Onda Cero in this regard, who added that, therefore, "the company itself is the one affected."
The CEO of SPEL also wanted to highlight that Ryanair has marked "a before and after on the island." "Despite the bad reputation that Ryanair has, as far as Lanzarote is concerned, with those 30 routes it has, almost 100 weekly flights in summer, the operational base it has here of three or four planes, with the countries that connectivity has allowed us, I think that for the island it has been a before and after," highlighted Héctor Fernández, who considers that the company "is an exceptional business case", although "sometimes they do things wrong as in this case."
