There was bad weather in Poland last night that resulted in a number of diversions due to airports being closed. Several flights diverted where possible to other airports. The passengers for the return leg were sent by bus from their original airports to the airport diverted to and the flights operated from there.
A few flights were canceled, but most of the ones effected were just severely delayed due to road transport taking longer than expected due to atrocious conditions. Rather than cancel the flight they were just delayed and ran just very late. With Krakow being a base opening today, it was fairly easy to get crews yesterday to allow this with the original crew who were traveling as passengers.
It's Ryanair policy to always divert to nearest open airport that can accept aircraft and where possible operate the return flight from there rather than cancel it should road conditions allow. Legacies tend to avoid anything other than regular served airports or bases and if they do happen to divert to somewhere that doesn't fill this criteria they just cancel the reserve leg.
It would have been far easier for Ryanair to do just that but they don't make a habit of doing it in my experience, some other legacy airlines could learn this, let alone what we've had in the past when flights bound for Dublin have got diverted to Manchester rather than Cork, Belfast or Shannon for example. Of course if they land at Manchester it involves far less running around and work to do for the powers that be to organise things. If they land at a non base airport which is served even better, since it then becomes a problem of the handling agent.
Last edited by DublinPole; 1st Apr 2013 at 12:07.