The consumer watchdog for Britain’s air transport industry, the Air Transport Users Council (AUC), has revealed that the unrealistic timetables operated by low-cost airlines are to blame for a large rise in complaints about flight cancellations.

Complaints to the Council regarding flight cancellations have risen by a third this year and have more than doubled in the last two years, which the AUC believes is due to the “no-frills airlines”.

In the year to the end of March 2004, the AUC handled 740 complaints about cancelled flights as opposed to 558 for the same period in 2002-3 and 354 in 2001-2.

The majority of complaints were directed at easyJet, FlyBe and BMIBaby, following rapid growth in their schedules and fleet sizes.

Low-cost airline Ryanair, however, alongside Air France, received praise from the AUC for receiving significantly fewer complaints in 2003-2004 than in 2002-3. Ryanair fell by a fifth from 201 to 161 while Air France complaints dropped from 139 to 41.

The chief executive of Ryanair, Michael O’Leary, has made it very clear that unhappy passengers will get short shrift on his airline however. Responding to the lack of passenger complaints procedure recently, O’Leary said: “Are we going to apologise when something goes wrong? No we’re not. You didn’t pay us for it!”

Of all complaints made to the AUC, the most common, at 16 per cent, is lost baggage but the number of baggage complaints received in the last year dropped by 23 per cent.

AUC chair Tina Tietjen said: “The increase in complaints about cancellations is becoming a cause for concern.

“While we commend the success of no-frills carriers in bringing fares down and hugely expanding the range of destinations on offer, we call on them to convince us that the inconvenience and financial costs suffered by passengers when flights are cancelled are not the flip side to the benefits these airlines bring to air passengers.”