Lorraine Kelly: Arrogant Ryanair bosses have been winging it for far too long. They have no one else to blame as customers walk away

SO Ryanair has effectively scuppered Christmas for up to 400,000 people.

Careful plans have been wrecked with yet another raft of flights scrapped by the beleaguered budget airline.

Two weeks after scrapping 2000 flights, Ryanair is now cancelling a further 18,000 over the winter months.

It’s another blow for long-suffering tourists who have, in the past, been willing to suffer poor customer service for the sake of a cheap journey.

You have to wonder whether or not they will continue to do so.

Behind every one of these cancelled flights is a story of someone left bitterly disappointed.

It might be a ruined honeymoon, a special anniversary break, a job interview or even a funeral.

Sadly the company isn’t exactly making it easy for customers to sort out the mess and confusion caused by its inability to draft simple rosters for its pilots.

This sort of ineptitude surely can’t fill any would-be passenger with confidence.

I feel sorry for the pilots, cabin crews and ground staff.

They must be worried about their jobs as they see the company’s share price falling.

Cabin crews do their best under conditions that are often difficult.

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They are under pressure to turn flights around quickly and to sell as many scratch cards, alcoholic drinks and pork scratchings as is humanly possible.

You will notice that on Ryanair flights there’s no pouch in front of your seat where you can put newspapers or magazines.

This is because people often leave things behind that they don’t want and it takes longer to clean the plane.

Every second counts when there is money to be made.

But, with that sort of attention to detail, how on earth did management mess up staff schedules to such an extent that they now have to cancel flights affecting hundreds of thousands of passengers?

All services between Scotland and London have been axed.

In this latest round of cancellations passengers won’t be entitled to compensation because they will have had at least 14 days’ notice.

The management style has been arrogant and even contemptuous in the past and, although it has tried to be more customer friendly in recent years, it has surely now backfired horribly.

I reckon chief executive Michael O’Leary has apologised more in the past two weeks than he has in the past 20 years.

For the sake of the staff, I hope something can be worked out.

Perhaps this disaster will make bosses think again. They must work hard to regain the trust of customers who have been so badly let down.

I’m not sure whether that can be achieved, but it’s up to the disgruntled consumers to decide whether or not they will ever travel with Ryanair again.