Ms Cathy Mannion:

On the question on hindsight and doing things differently, the commission has thought about this and had discussions upon it. Airlines know in advance that an event such as the one we are discussing is going to occur because it does not happen overnight. Ryanair probably had a week or so to think about this before it started cancelling flights. The key lesson is that if an airline knows an event is going to happen, the ideal thing would be for its regulatory person to tell us what is going to happen. We would not say anything publically about it because that is a commercial decision for the airline but we would tell it what passengers need to be told and how they should be told. It could use whatever language it wanted to do so. Had Ryanair asked us in advance whether our requirements would be satisfied by its proposed action, it would have been a far more straightforward process and would have avoided the situation that ensued of the first and second emails being wrong and the third one being right.