Ryanair cabin crew strikes to hit 190 f lights across Europe

RYANAIR passengers around Europe face further upheaval as a cabin crew strike is expected to ground 190 flights on Friday, disrupting the flight plans of 30,000 customers.

The cabin crews are to go on strike in Spain, Belgium, Holland, Portugal, Italy and Germany.

All affected passengers have been given three days’ notice of the cancellations, Ryanair said.

The airline did not respond when asked how many Irish flights were affected.

But one industry expert said he expects flights from Ireland will continue as normal. ‘As far as I know I don’t think there’s a single flight out of Ireland cancelled,’ said Eoghan Corry, of travelextra.ie.

Ryanair said it had made significant progress in recent weeks with union negotiations and said it had offered talks to staff from the five countries offering them improved conditions.

‘We hope these unions will see common sense and work with us to finalise agreements for the benefit of our pilots and cabin crew over the coming weeks without further disrupting our customers or our flights,’ Ryanair spokesman Kenny Jacobs said.

Mr Corry said that Ryanair has announced flight cancellations in advance during repeated pilot and cabin crew strikes that started this year.

He said: ‘Ryanair are cancelling in advance. The test of that strategy is will any of the [flights] that are scheduled be stopped? That’s the prize for the unions.

‘We’re getting closer to the situation, it could happen at some stage, where one of the scheduled flights will actually be stopped but so far none of them has.

‘Ryanair passenger numbers are running about 9% ahead of last year so it’s a big stretch of their resources to get through all these strikes and they’re doing it successfully.’