PATSY MCGARRY

Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary has promised improvements in the coming weeks to the airline’s website which he admitted was “very clunky”.

He also said it was putting in place procedures to ensure that what happened to neurosurgeon Dr Muhammad Taufiq Al Sattar would not be repeated.

Last month, Ryanair charged Dr Al Sattar for changing his flight from Dublin to Birmingham after his wife and three children died in a fire in Leicester.

The airline later apologised and and issued a full refund.

'Very frustrating'

In a Prime Time interview on RTÉ television last night, Mr O'Leary said there were a number of things the airline needed to improve.

“If you look at the way our website works it’s very clunky, it’s very frustrating and difficult to get through.

“It’s the source of most complaints I get from customers. They like our fares, they love our punctuality, they like the service we deliver but they think the website is awful and I agree with them.

“You’re going to see us roll out a couple of developments in the coming weeks where we make our website much simpler to engage with.”

On Ryanair’s attitude to customers he said: “There is no doubt I’ve made mistakes. There’s no doubt I need to learn from those mistakes. But I think the core here – we employ 9,000 aviation professionals, on a daily basis, they do a fantastic job, they deliver the best airline service of any airline service in Europe, never mind Ireland.”

He added: “We have to be a little bit more sensitive and responsive to the customers.”