Ryanair’s chief executive has warned that 100,000 passengers could see their flights disrupted next week due to an air traffic control union strike in France.
Michael O’Leary told the Money blog the industrial action would cost Ryanair around £20m.
While the company could afford to swallow the cost, he said, it would ultimately be customers who will be worse off, and they should complain.
Members of the SNCTA will go on strike from Tuesday 7 October until the morning of Friday 10 October over a dispute about pay and working conditions.
While it will obviously affect flights heading to France, it will also affect those that use French airspace to reach their final destination – these are called overflights.
This includes flights to and from lots of places including 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, he 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.
“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.”
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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…
