Posted on February 14, 2008 by Fiona Hilliard

Argus car hire customers looking to avail of cheap air travel later this month should note that Ryanair’s booking site will be unavailable for three days due to essential site updates.
Internet and call centre services will be disabled between 22:00 on Friday 22nd February and 23:00 on Monday 25th February.  Flight changes and reviews will not be possible, but flights will operate as normal during the period.
Ryanair regrets the shutdown of telephone and online services but says it was impossible to avoid.
“It’s the same booking engine for both so you can’t change them separately, but this is simply a transfer, and the system has already been tested so it won’t take any longer than the three days,” he said.
He is adamant that the disruption will be minimal, adding:
“We planned it now because it’s a slower month for bookings generally, and we’re already running ahead of plans for bookings in February and March generally. We’re encouraging passengers to snap up seats before we do this, launching another sale about a week beforehand with nearly 1m seats for €5 including taxes across Europe.
“We carry 50m passengers a year so you can work out roughly what we’d lose in three days.”
The closure means there will be no on-line check-in between 01:00 on 22nd February until 23:00 on 25th, forcing passengers to check-in at the airport-but they will not be charged the fee for this element which has recently increased.