Ryanair cancels 190 flights ahead of Friday’s strike

Ryanair has “pre-cancelled” 190 of its scheduled flights on Friday due to the “unnecessary strike by a tiny minority of cabin crew” in Spain, Belgium, Holland, Portugal, Italy, and Germany.

The airline said 30,000 customers were likely to be affected and that all would have received emails and text SMS messages yesterday morning.

“These strikes are unnecessary when Ryanair has already agreed to the union demands for local contracts and local terms and conditions,” it said.

“As these strikes are being promoted and driven by competitor employees, they are regrettably beyond Ryanair’s control.”

The airline warned that if strikes continue at a time when oil prices were rising, “it is inevitable that we will have to look again at our capacity growth this winter and in summer 2019”.

Yesterday, Dutch pilot union Vereniging Nedelandse Verkeersvliegers (VNV) said that its pilots would join with the cabin crew and go on strike for a second time on Friday.

“For the last 10 months, the Dutch Airline Pilots Association has tried to negotiate a collective labour agreement between Ryanair and the Dutch ALPA without any result,” said the union.

“Also, this second strike of Dutch-based Ryanair pilots should be a signal for the Ryanair management.

“Our goal is clear #RyanairMustChange and respect the rights of their workers.”

It said its demands are modest.

“Dutch law should be applied; no more bogus self-employment and a sufficient sick pay and pension,” said the union.

Ryanair Pre-Cancels Under 190 Of 2,400 (8%) Scheduled Flights On Fri 28th Sept: https://t.co/yErvVaCLgm

— Ryanair (@Ryanair) September 25, 2018

Ryanair also announced it had agreed a collective labour agreement with the three main cabin crew unions in Italy to cover all of its Italian based cabin crew from October 1.

It said that agreement would run for three years and be governed by Italian law and the Italian courts.

Its chief people officer Eddie Wilson said the deal was “a further sign of the significant progress Ryanair is making in reaching agreements with our people and their unions in different EU countries, and disproves false claims made by smaller unions not involved in these negotiations, and who are threatening strikes, which will either not take place or be unsuccessful.” He said the company had invited its German, Portuguese and Spanish unions to meet with it “so that we can negotiate and hopefully agree similar CLAs in these other larger markets”.