'S**t happens': Ryanair defends communications manager posting photo of himself on toilet

Ryanair has defended the actions of its communications manager after he tweeted a photo of him sitting on a toilet following a "s**t happens" week for the airline.

Ryanair's Kenny Jacobs quickly deleted the message, which contained the photo of him on the toilet holding a newspaper in place of toilet roll.

The photo, posted on 22 September, appeared along with the caption: "Winding down after a 's**t happens' week."

The picture emerged following a turbulent time for the budget airline, which has seen them lose millions after cancelling up to 400,000 passengers' flights following issues with pilot rotas.

Responding to the picture from Jacobs, a spokesperson from Ryanair told the Irish Independent: "This was posted in jest in response to the barrage of coverage from the [newspaper]... during a week when his full focus was on re-accommodating customers."

It is unclear which newspaper Jacobs was holding in the photo.

Jacobs had previously posted a photograph onto Facebook of a pint of Guinness along with the caption "somedays a pint of plain is your only man" – a reference to the repeated line in the famous Irish poem The Workman's Friend about taking comfort in beer during "times of trouble and lousy strife".

Announcing an update on the problems surrounding Ryanair's flights, the airline said they will continue to cancel dozens of flights day until the end of October.

Jacobs said: "We apologise sincerely to each and every one of the 315,000 customers whose original flights were cancelled over a six-week period in September and October, while we work to resolve this short term rostering failure.

"We have taken on extra customer service teams to speed up the rate at which we accommodate and action alternative flight requests or refund applications. We expect to have the vast majority of these completed by the end of this week.

"The vast majority of these requests are being dealt with online, but as our call centres and chat lines are extremely busy, we ask affected customers to bear with us as we do everything we can to respond to their requests and try to resolve any problems we have created for them, for which we again sincerely apologise."