More than 100,000 passengers could see their flights disrupted next week due to an air traffic control union strike in France, Ryanair’s chief executive has warned.
The budget airline’s boss Michael O’Leary said the walkout would cost Ryanair around £20million in lost revenue.
Members of the Syndicat majoritaire des contrôleurs aériens, SNCTA, France’s largest union representing air traffic controllers, will go on strike from October 7th until the morning of October 10th over a dispute about pay and working conditions.
As well as flights heading to France, the industrial action will also affect those that use French airspace to reach their final destination – known as ‘overflights’ – including flights bound to and from Spain, Italy and Greece.
O’Leary called for overflights to be protected from strike action, saying disrupting them is an abuse of the free single market.
On the first two days of the strikes, the airline chief said Ryanair was expecting to be asked to cancel about 600 flights – with almost all of them overflights.
‘That’s about 100,000 passengers who will have their flights cancelled needlessly next Wednesday and Thursday,’ he said.
More than 100,000 passengers could see their flights disrupted next week due to an air traffic control union strike in France, Ryanair’s chief executive has warned
‘On any given day at the moment, we operate about 3,500 flights and about 900 of those flights cross over French airspace and about two thirds of those, around 600 flights, are cancelled every day there’s an air traffic control strike.
‘The UK is the country whose flights get cancelled most because of the geographic proximity to France.’
While he accepted the rights of French workers to strike, he said Eurocontrol, a civil-military organisation that supports air traffic management across Europe, could step in to look after the airspace and keep flights operating.
‘It wouldn’t stop the French striking, they have the right to strike and we accept that but they should be cancelling local French fights, not flights from the UK to Spain or from Italy to Ireland. This is a fundamental breach of the single market,’ he said.
He called on the Government to ‘put pressure’ on the EU Commission and the French Government to protect overflights during industrial action.
‘We b***** well demand that our overflights are protected. If British citizens today going to Italy, or we have Spanish visitors wanting to come to London, they should not have their flights disrupted or cancelled,’ he said.
He claimed: ‘They, the government, don’t care about the travelling public and they won’t get off their a**** and demand that their overflights be protected.’
A Department of Transport spokesperson said: ‘Airspace is sovereign, and it is for each state to decide how best to manage their own.
The budget airline’s boss Michael O’Leary (pictured last month) said the walkout would cost Ryanair around £20million
‘We know strikes can cause disruption for passengers and airlines and airports have robust resilience plans in place to minimise their impact.’
O’Leary encouraged affected passengers to complain about any disruptions to transport ministers and the European Commission using the airline’s dedicated ATCruinedourholiday.com website.
Passengers using easyJet, British Airways, Vueling and Lufthansa flights could also face disruptions.
But the full impact of the strikes will not be known until next week, as airlines tend to avoid cancellations until the action begins.
Passengers who are due to fly next week have been told to keep an eye on the status of their flight on the airline’s website or app.
