While I do not know the facts of the case detailed and do not wish to answer Ryanairs critics for them, Ryanair are not the only airline that for some reason cancel flights.
See below the CAA stats for February taken from the Ryanair website. Taking the figures below into account there must be a lot of cancelled flights on a daily basis so how do other airlines deal with their passengers when flights are cancelled ?
Major airline for fewest cancellations*
Airline Ranking % flights completed
Ryanair 1 98.4
Iberia 2 98.1
Alitalia 3 97.6
SAS 4 97.5
Lufthansa 5 97.3
BA 6 96.8
Austrian 7 94.7
Air France Refuse to Publish
easyJet