Strikers won’t cause chaos, says Ryanair
Airline vows to ride out Europe-wide walkouts
RYANAIR has said it will again cancel a small number of flights in advance in a bid to minimise disruption to passengers if cabin crew in five countries go through with a threat of further strike action later this month.
Europe’s largest low-cost carrier has struggled to curb an industrial relations revolt in recent months and suffered its latest strike on Wednesday when pilots and crew in Germany forced the cancellation of 150 of its 400 German flights.
Unions representing cabin crew in five countries – including Italy and Spain – are due to announce whether they will hold a joint strike September 28.
Ryanair said that even if there is another strike, it expects a significant majority of its cabin Unrest: Michael O’Leary crew in Spain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Portugal to work normally, as they have during previous strikes.
Industry expert Eoghan Corry, of travelextra.ie, said in relation to Wednesday’s strike: ‘The German pilots’ union has 400 members who are Ryanair pilots and they stopped around one third of the flights in Germany. That’s a significant impact, but that’s not chaos.’
Ryanair chief marketing officer Kenny Jacobs said: ‘If there is a further unsuccessful cabin crew strike on September 28 then, as we demonstrated in Germany, Ryanair will pre-advise customers of a small number of flight cancellations.’
Ryanair suffered its worst ever strikes this summer over the slow progress in negotiating col- lective labour agreements with pilots and cabin crew.
Although it secured a breakthrough in August when it reached a deal with striking Irish pilots, unions representing pilots and cabin crew in Germany threatened further walkouts if Ryanair did not improve its offer on terms and pay.
Chief executive Michael O’Leary said on Wednesday that the airline, which operates some 2,500 flights every day, was willing to accept strikes if that was the cost of defending its lowcost business model.
But Ryanair rejected what it said were ‘false claims’ made by Belgian union CNE that strike action by a small minority of cabin crew in two weeks’ time would cause ‘travel chaos’.
Ryanair pointed to its experience during previous strikes which included five days of strikes by Irish pilots this summer, and on each of those days, it completed 280 of its 300 flights to and from Ireland, because more than 75% of its Irish pilots continued to work normally.
Ryanair’s Kenny Jacobs said: ‘Repeated false claims made by these unions about “travel chaos” have proven to be unfounded.
‘While we regret the limited strike actions that have taken place this summer, in all cases we have judiciously pre-cancelled a small number of our 2,500 daily flights in order to minimise customer disruption and inconvenience.’
Pilots continued to work normally