Ryanair strike: 250 flights cancelled in walkout
Pilots and cabin crew in six countries walked out on Friday 28 September
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Your support makes all the difference.Ryanair cancelled 250 flights, affecting around 40,000 passengers, ahead of a coordinated one-day strike on Friday 28 September by pilots and cabin crew in Spain, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Germany.
Various unions called for their members to stage a 24-hour walkout from 12am (GMT) on Friday 28 September. Although pay is a factor, the majority of unions seem to be lobbying most strongly for a transition from workers being employed on Irish contracts and subject to Irish legislation to their own countries’ labour laws.
The union Verdi has called on Ryanair cabin crew in Germany to join tomorrow's strike, following fruitless negotiations.
They were previously part of the walk-out on 12 September.
An estimated 2,000 Ryanair employees, mainly cabin crew working in Spain, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal and Italy, as well as Dutch pilots, are striking today.
In total, around 250 flights have been grounded, affecting 40,000 passengers.
Ryanair had cancelled 150 flights earlier in the week and on Thursday the airline confirmed pilots in Germany would also be going on strike, with up to 100 flights affected.
Stansted, the airline’s biggest base in Europe, is the worst-affected airport by today's strike. Twenty flights, mainly to and from Germany, have been cancelled.
At Manchester, links to and from Barcelona, Berlin, Faro and Malaga have been grounded.
Other cancellations include Birmingham to Lanzarote and East Midlands to Malaga.
Despite the regrettable and unjustified strike action taking place in six of our 37 markets today, all 400 first wave aircraft departed on schedule this morning.
Today, over 2,150 Ryanair flights (90 per cent of our schedule) will operate as normal carrying 400,000 customers across Europe. Ryanair took every step to minimise the disruption and we notified our customers as early as possible advising them of their free move, refund or reroute options.
We want to again apologise to customers affected by this unnecessary disruption.
Ryanair
EasyJet admitted today that it has benefited from Ryanair's numerous flight cancellations this summer and autumn.
The rival low-cost airline revealed in a trading update that it's expecting full-year 2018 headline profits before tax of between £570-£580 million.
Johan Lundgren, easyJet chief executive, said: “We have benefited from a number of one-off events in 2018, including the bankruptcies of Monarch and Air Berlin, as well as Ryanair cancellations.”
Although Ryanair has tried to downplay the disruption caused by today's strike, many passengers have been left unimpressed by the airline's handling of the situation.
Aidan Doherty tweeted: "Ryanair your airline [is] an absolute joke. Three hours' notice of stike [sic] flight cancellation freephone customer service number that cuts you off trying to call about it". He added: "I'll never fly with Ryanair if I can help it again."
The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) is encouraging passengers affected by today's flight cancellations to claim compensation.
A spokesperson said: “Passengers have the right to seek compensation under EU legislation when flights are delayed by three hours or more, cancelled or when they are denied boarding.
“We note that the recent industrial action is not by Ryanair’s UK employees, but it is the view of the UK Civil Aviation Authority, taking account of previous court rulings, that when a flight cancellation is caused by strike action by the airline’s employees, the airline is required to pay compensation to passengers in respect of the cancellation of the flight, if it has not warned passengers of the cancellation at least two weeks prior to the scheduled time of departure.
“In the case of the most recent industrial action involving Ryanair, passengers must first submit their claim to the airline and if they are not satisfied with the response, they can seek redress via the approved Alternative Dispute Resolution service”.
Cabin crew at Frankfurt airport this morning have been spotted holding signs reading: “No rights, no flights”.
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