Refund data point
 

Data point on FR refund:

FR flight to KRK 10 Dec cancelled (invol). Refund requested via online form 26 Dec.
28 Dec. email received whether voucher or cash refund. Immediately applied for cash refund.
29 Dec. notification from Paypal that FR has made a (full) refund.

Impressive !

In this situation try another browser than IE (Edge, Crome etc) - I had the same issue recently but using another PC with different browser solved it.

This wasn't a browser issue - the issue was that the booking was for a round trip, but only the outward portion was canceled (at that time). The chat hotline could nevertheless change the return flight at the same time, but the automated rebooking on the website couldn't.

If anyone is still playing these games (speculative bookings on cheap flights likely to be canceled), note that rebooking rules became more restrictive. In case of a cancellation, you can still rebook on the original route to any date, but when rebooking to a different destination, the new flight must be within 2 weeks of the original flight date.

Was scheduled to fly with Ryanair on 4th January, from Birmingham to Dublin, but Irish government have extended travel ban to 6th January so flight has been cancelled.

Ryanair are offering repatriation / rescue flights for Irish citizens and the Irish embassy has reserved a seat on a flight from Manchester to Dublin tomorrow, but state that a 95 Euro payment must be made at the airport

Can Ryanair apply different rules if they are rescue flights, or should they provide the free change?

They have to re-route you free of charge under comparable transport conditions. If the rescue flight isn't under comparable transport conditions, then they can charge you extra for the rescue flight. If the rescue flight isn't under comparable transport conditions, then you can insist that FR pays your hotel and restaurant bills in the UK until such time that it becomes possible to travel to Ireland under comparable transport conditions. I'd imagine that it is cheaper for FR to pay for your rescue flight than to put you in a hotel for a prolonged period of time.

The rescue flights are operated by Ryanair on behalf of the Irish government - the Irish government are marketing and selling the rescue flights (and determining whether or not you meet their criteria to be allowed on board), not Ryanair.

Ryanair are not "offering" rescue flights.

Lviv to Poland - cancelled 2021?
 

The flights for 2021 seem to show as full for all options so are they cancelled? Anyone know what’s happening? Interested in LWO-KRK.

Most likely yes. They have pulled all UA routes. Try Wizz from KTW. It's 2x weekly in winter, 3x in summer season.

If you must fly, you have LOT with short connections, otherwise you've got the direct train to Przemysl Glowny and then onwards to Krakow. If you choose KTW you'll need to make your way to KRK using one of the minibus operators like Matuszek (50zl) or rent a car. An Uber is about 350-400Zl. Once you have faffed with all that, I'd be tempted to just take LOT or the train to KRK.

Of course nothing is as convenient as a 35 min flying time, LWO-KRK.

Any strategy in buying a cheap Ryanair ticket for June to Poland (eg. POZ or GDN) which can be purchased for around 7 EUR currently, and hope for a cancellation or significant schedule change, which will allow (invol) rebooking to much more expensive Ryanair flights to other destinations (+/- 14 days)? I deem that the chances that Ryanair will have to extend the PL flight cancellations into June to be quite high.

I have no intention of traveling to Poland so if no cancellation/significant schedule change I will just discard the ticket/not use it - not a big loss.

Any other deeply discounted Ryanair routes that are likely to be cancelled?

I did this last year when I bought cheap Ryanair tickets to Estonia and rebooked them after the flights got canceled. It works. Note that rebooking two-way tickets on the website is tricky if only the outbound flight has been canceled - the automated rebooking process won't let you change the destination, you have to go through the chat (which takes time). Rebooking one-way tickets was very simple - a link for rebooking appeared next to the canceled flight, it had the usual Ryanair rebooking interface except that the price of rebooked flights was shown as zero.

Not doing it this time - because due to Covid-19 restrictions, I doubt I will want to fly anywhere this June.

My strategy paid off. Now with the 4 cancelled flights to/from Poland in June.

The cancellation emails from Ryanair states:

We are allowing customers to change their cancelled flight to another date or time on the original route or to any other route within our network. You can move your flight to any date within 14 days before or after your cancelled flight.

This means that even pure date changes (same route/flight) will also have to be within +/- 14 days? I'm not sure if this is in line with the applicable EU regulation.

Obviously, for the generous offer to rebook to any route within the FR network can be limited to 14 days before or after the original flight.

Congratulations.

I have a recollection that you could pick any date as long as you stayed on the original route. My cancellation email was in German, so I can not compare if the wording has changed since the end of 2020. Why not just try rebooking the flight on Ryanair's web page (without completing the rebooking)? You will see that it will show the price for valid rebooked flights as 0 EUR.

I tried to rebook on FR webpage. If I change the date only to beyond 14 days af original travel date, an up-fare is indicated. The same applies if I try to change to different route. If I change the date to within 14 days, the "Free" change is indicated.

The odd thing is that if I try to rebook to a different route with a travel date less than 7 days from today (but still to later than 14 days before original travel date, i.e. within the +/- 14 days window) an up-fare is also shown, indicating that rebooking needs to be done at least 7 days before the new travel date, i.e. you can't wait to rebook until shortly before your new travel date - however, this is not mentioned anywhere. :confused:

That's interesting, things must have worsened since I used this trick.

You can always try rebooking via the Ryanair chat. There, you can at least argue with a person, and they used to be quite flexible (though this could have been enhanced away as well).

Follow up: Ryanair chat agent rebooked the ticket (rerouted to Spain 4 days out) without fuss (despite FR webpage showing a significant up-fare to be paid). Very efficient and quickly done once I got through the queue to an agent.