Ryanair has published the complete list of flights to be cancelled before the end of October.

Around 50 flights a day will be suspended from schedules as the low-cost carrier seeks to meet holiday requirements for pilots before the end of the year.

However, this only represents two per cent of planned departures, with Ryanair still offering around 2,450 flights a day.

Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary said: “While over 98 per cent of our customers will not be affected by these cancellations over the next six weeks, we apologise unreservedly to those customers whose travel will be disrupted, and assure them that we have done our utmost to try to ensure that we can re-accommodate most of them on alternative flights on the same or next day.

“Ryanair is not short of pilots – we were able to fully crew our peak summer schedule in June, July and August – but we have messed up the allocation of annual leave to pilots in Sept and Oct because we are trying to allocate a full year’s leave into a nine-month period from April to December.

“This issue will not recur in 2018 as Ryanair goes back onto a 12 month calendar leave year from January 1st to December 31st 2018.”

Ryanair came under pressure earlier this week after only revealing which flights would be cancelled up until September 20th, causing anger among passengers.

The situation has been exacerbated by Ryanair’s confused messaging on the subject, with air traffic control strikes, and attempts to improve punctuality also blamed for the cancellations.

The news was also released late on Friday, causing growing confusion over the weekend.

O’Leary added: “This is a mess of our own making.

“I apologise sincerely to all our customers for any worry or concern this has caused them over the past weekend.

“We have only taken this decision to cancel this small proportion of our 2,500 daily flights so that we can provide extra standby cover and protect the punctuality of the 98 per cent of flights that will be unaffected by these cancellations.”

The planned cancellations have been allocated, where possible, to Ryanair’s bigger base airports, and routes with multiple daily frequencies.

This will, Ryanair hopes, allow it to offer disrupted customers the maximum number of alternate flights and routes in order to minimise inconvenience.

Customers affected by these cancellations will be emailed with offers of alternative flights or full refunds, and details of their EU261 compensation entitlement, the carrier said.