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Over 1,000 Flights Cancelled By Ryanair In September Amid ACT Issues

By Dalton MacNamee
04/10/2026
Est. Reading: 2 minutes

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More than 1,000 flights were cancelled by Ryanair across September, according to the airline.

The airline have partly blamed this on the recent "collapse" in the air traffic control system in Britain, specifically two air traffic control (ATC) issues in the UK within two weeks of each other last month.

They also mentioned ATC strikes in Belgium and general disruption across Europe due to volcanic ash clouds from Mount Etna eruptions.


Pressure has been mounting on the boss of Britain's National Air Traffic Services (Nats), Martin Rolfe, with calls for him to resign, including from Ryanair, amid several air traffic issues, leading to the cancellation of thousands of flights across the industry last month, with hundreds of thousands of passengers heavily affected.

One recent stance was caused by a "connectivity issue" at its Prestwick Centre in Scotland, unrelated to an ATC software malfunction on September 8, leading to widespread chaos.

Following these calls for Mr Wolfe to step down from his role, Transport Secretary, Heidi Alexander called a meeting with Nats chairman, Warren East, former chief executive at Rolls-Royce to discuss these problems over the coming weeks.

According to the latest figures from Ryanair, it had operated more than 111,700 flights over the last month, which carried over 20.1 million passengers, an increase of 4% from the previous year.

Their load factor, otherwise known as the amount of seats on each flight, increased by a steady 94% last month.

Data gathered by Wizz Air, reported that the amount of passengers flown over the last month had increased by 24%, moving up to 7.78 million, with capacity increasing by 25.3%.

The second half of this year is to also see Wizz Air cut its flight programme by 5%, due to wider Iran war pressures on the travel sector and the ongoing increases in fuel costs.

It was also revealed that shares in the company had moved higher than in Dublin trade.

All this comes a matter of weeks after Ryanair's boss, Michael O'Leary warned of a likely increase in airfares for next summer, due to tensions over oil price surges following the conflict in Iran. More on this story here. 

(All quotes according to RTÉ).

Written by Dalton MacNamee

Dalton Mac Namee is a content writer for Classichits.ie and a freelance GAA reporter from Louth, Ireland.

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