Ryanair Goes Offline for the Weekend

Feb 22, 2008

More Reading on This Topic: Ryanair, Technology

If you need to book a ticket, change your ticket, or view your reservation on Ryanair in the next few days, you better hurry up. Starting tonight (Friday, Feb 22) at 10pm GMT (11pm on the Continent), Ryanair will completely shut down its booking engine while it upgrades it. The site won’t come back up until Monday, Feb 25 at 11p GMT. During that time, you won’t be able to:

Make a booking online
Make any changes to an existing booking online
Review your flight itinerary online
Check-in online for any flight (fees will be waived to check-in at the airport)
Get any information from Ryanair – they’re shutting down their call centers the whole time

I have to say, I can’t remember ever seeing a system upgrade go like this before. Knowing Ryanair, this was probably the cheapest way to do the upgrade, so they signed on to just shut everything down. Hopefully when it comes back up, they’ll have better luck than other airlines who have recently tried to upgrade. Keep your fingers crossed, and if you’re traveling this weekend, get there earlier than normal to deal with the long lines that are likely to occur.

Brett

6 responses to “Ryanair Goes Offline for the Weekend”

seth

Feb 22, 2008 at 9:51 am

Cheap, but not customer friendly. I wouldn’t expect RyanAir to do it any other way!

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Pete

Feb 22, 2008 at 11:42 am

I wonder if they’ll be shutting down all their planes with passengers on them, too.

Seriously, though – shutting down the leading budget airline website for an entire weekend is one thing, but scrapping the call center, too? I guess this is Michael O’Leary’s way of saving money to pay off the Sarkozy lawsuit.

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Bryan in San Francisco

Feb 22, 2008 at 3:59 pm

They sure needed to do something about that web site; I’ve seen gambling web sites with more class.

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mad_rich

Mar 5, 2008 at 11:44 am

Never underestimate the power of a bit of publicity.

I can’t think of any reason in a million years why they would *need* to shut the thing down, but doing so garners a hell of a lot of publicity. Then O’Leary can brag to his heart’s content about what an earth-shattering change this is for Ryanair.

This is the airline that reportedly bans staff from charging their phones at work – ‘ostensibly to save money’ but more likely to gain a few precious column inches.

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delena duque

Aug 29, 2008 at 12:33 pm

ryanair sounds like it is doing nasty operations but it seems it is giving needed service that is why its planes are always full.
by the way, how doi go about cancelling a flight?
one member of my family wasnot able to get her visa but i booked earlier for flights for her via ryanair.
thanks!

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CF

Aug 29, 2008 at 1:18 pm

delena – You can’t cancel Ryanair flights. If you bought it, you take the flight or you’re out of luck. You can, however, get back the government taxes less a 15 pound fee. (http://www.ryanair.com/site/EN/faqs.php?sect=chg&quest=unusedflight)

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