Low-cost carrier, Ryanair’s website has crashed with just days to go before an all-important Annual General Meeting which has been enveloped with controversy. In a statement posted on Ryanair’s official Twitter feed, the airline said the outage was being caused by “server issues as a result of a high volume of traffic”. Reports suggest the airline’s app is facing similar problems.
Due to server issues as a result of a high volume of traffic, our website is experiencing brief outages, which are currently being resolved. We apologise to affected customers who are advised to use the Ryanair app to check-in, which is unaffected. Updates will follow.
— Ryanair (@Ryanair) September 17, 2018
Website visitors trying to access the site are being redirected to an Irish ‘news’ subdomain which states “There are no updates available at this time”. We attempted to access the site across multiple devices which all resulted in the same page being displayed over the course of an hour of trying.
Ryanair claims its official website, ryanair.com is the worlds largest travel website with approximately 50 million unique visitors every month. For years, Ryanair refused to list its flight inventory on flight comparison websites, instead choosing to process all bookings directly through its website.
While the budget carrier has opened up its inventory in recent times, it’s unclear whether prospective passengers will be able to complete their bookings through a third-party website.
The app is NOT unaffected pic.twitter.com/h65gFpPQzK
— Leonardo Fortuna (@leorandom1) September 17, 2018
Ryanair passengers are reporting problems accessing the airline’s website and app for several hours. New flight bookings, as well as check-in and the ability to buy extras like luggage are affected. Requests for more information from the the airline are currently going unanswered.
The low-cost airline, Transavia which is part of the Air France KLM group is also reportedly experiencing website issues.
Ryanair’s AGM is scheduled to start on Thursday – the first since a wave of industrial unrest amongst workers at the airline started. In the last year, Ryanair has been hit by allegations of poor working conditions, low pay and so-called “social dumping”. Pilots and cabin crew have held strikes in several countries and a new 24-hour strike is planned by cabin crew on 28th September
A number of prominent shareholders have rallied against Ryanair in recent weeks, urging investors to vote down the airline’s annual report and the reappointment of billionaire Chairman, David Bonderman. In the wake of the controversy, Michael O’Leary, the carriers chief executive has taken the unpopular decision of banning media from the event.
Ryanair says its website and app are back up and running after experiencing problems following the success of a seat sale in Germany.
