Bookings will not be possible with Ryanair for three days later this month as the airline changes its flight reservation system.
Both the internet and call centre booking systems will be down between 22:00 on 22 February and 23:00 on 25 February, meaning flight changes will not be possible, nor reviews of existing bookings, although all flights will operate as normal during the period.
It is not known how much the shut down will cost the carrier ” it could be millions of Euros ” and a Ryanair spokesman told ABTN that it was impossible to avoid a blanket closure of telephone and online reservations.
”It”s the same booking engine for both so you can”t change them separately, but this is simply a transfer, and the system has already been tested so it won”t take any longer than the three days,” he said.
And he was bullish that disruption would be minimal ” ”We planned it now because it”s a slower month for bookings generally, and we”re already running ahead of plans for bookings in February and March generally. We”re encouraging passengers to snap up seats before we do this, launching another sale about a week beforehand with nearly 1m seats for ”5 including taxes across Europe.
”We carry 50m passengers a year so you can work out roughly what we”d lose in three days.”
He said the new system could help passengers save money - ”There”ll be no change to the user interface, by and large customers won”t notice any difference with that, but it will be more passenger friendly because they”ll see various dates and price options at a glance ” this will display a week”s fares spread out on any given route [three days either side of the set date] so they might see a cheaper flight three days before they were planning and go for that. Currently it only gives prices for the day you ask to look at.”
It is being installed to help speed up bookings as the carrier looks to increase capacity across its network in the coming years.
”This system will handle a capacity of 200m passengers every year,” he said. ”We are currently carrying 50m passengers annually, up to 60m next year, and the current system is slower. This will last a good few years.
”It will be marginally quicker for individual users, but from our point of view at peak periods we”ll process much more quickly which means we can do more business.”
The closure will mean no on-line check-in between 01:00 on 22 February until 23:00 on 25th, forcing passengers to check-in at the airport ” but they will not be charged the fee for this element, which was recently increased.