Will Ryanair strike threat affect you? They’ll tell you on Monday

RYANAIR has finally acknowledged that some of its passengers may face disruption to their pre-Christmas flight plans next week.

However, the airline will not provide contingency plans for worried travellers until next Monday, just two days before threatened industrial action.

Pilots in Ireland, represented by trade unions the Irish Airline Pilots Association and Impact, and in Portugal are set to down tools for 24-hours next Wednesday.

Ant it is now understood that pilots in Germany and Spain are considering taking industrial action too.

This follows a decision by pilots and ground crew in Italy to take industrial action for four hours today, between 1pm and 5pm.

Ryanair came in for some sharp criticism from the travelling public in recent months, after cancelling a series of flights – affecting more than 700,000 customers – due to problems it faced over pilots’ holidays.

However, the airline said it would do everything it can to ‘minimise disruption for our customers’ during the upcoming disputes, which is over demands for collective bargaining.

A spokesman for the company last night said: ‘Ryanair has been notified of threatened industrial action up to and including a 24-hour strike on Wednesday next, December 20, by a minority of our pilots in Ireland, Portugal, Germany, Italy and Spain. This may lead to some flight disruptions. Ryanair will publish contingency plans to minimise these disruptions for our customers, on Monday December 18 on our website.

‘We apologise sincerely to our customers for any worry or concern that this threatened action, during Christmas week, by a small number of very well paid pilots, may cause them.’

Impact said earlier this week that 94% of its 100 or so members employed directly by Ryanair had returned secret ballots in favour of action.