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Hundreds of Ryanair flights will not take off as planned on Friday due to pilot strikes in five countries.<\/p>\nHundreds of Ryanair flights will not take off as planned on Friday due to pilot strikes in five countries.<\/p>\n
Staff in Ireland, Germany, Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands are staging a 24-hour walkout over pay and conditions.<\/p>\n
Around 250 flights have been cancelled as a result, forcing passengers who planned to travel on Friday to rebook or take different routes.<\/p>\n
The Irish budget airline said the strikes were \u201cregrettable and unjustified\u201d and called for unions to come back to the negotiating table.<\/p>\n
Despite the walkouts, 85% of its scheduled flights, more than 2,000, will operate as normal, Ryanair said.<\/p>\n
\u201cRyanair took every step to minimize the disruption and we notified our customers as early as possible advising them of their free move, refund or reroute options,\u201d the carrier said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe majority of customers have already been accommodated on another Ryanair flight.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to again apologize to customers affected by this unnecessary disruption and we ask the striking unions to continue negotiations instead of calling anymore unjustified strikes.\u201d<\/p>\n
One customer described the airline as a \u201cheadache\u201d, complaining they had had difficulty getting a quick response after contacting the firm on their live chat.<\/p>\n
They tweeted: \u201c#ryanair cancelled my flight in the last min because of pilots strike. They offer me to change my tickets online which it\u2019s not possible because of their system crash. Noone is on the phone and livechat. They even don\u2019t do a refund. Ryanair is an headache.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another customer said she would miss work meetings and a doctor\u2019s appointment due to a cancelled flight.<\/p>\n
She wrote: \u201cMany thanks to @Ryanair for cancelling my flight home + ensuring all of the de-stressing I have done on this trip is cancelled out in an instant.\u201d<\/p>\n
In June Ryanair signed an agreement with the Unite union, giving hundreds of cabin crew employees full consultation rights and collective bargaining.<\/p>\n
The airline said at the time that it was \u201ca further sign of the progress Ryanair is making with trade unions since our December 2017 decision to recognize them\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Unite agreement came six months after the airline signed what was described as an \u201chistoric\u201d recognition deal with the trade union representing pilots.<\/p>\n
Under the agreement, the British Airline Pilots\u2019 Association (Balpa) was recognized as the sole trade union representing all of Ryanair\u2019s 600 employed pilots based in the UK.<\/p>\n
Bernard Harbor from the FORSA trade union says both sides are still some way off reaching a deal.<\/p>\n
“We believe that this is a problem that can be resolved through negotiations,” said Mt Harbor.<\/p>\n
“I have to say that the experience of pilots so far is that the company is not being prepared to grapple with the issues and that’s why they feel that they’ve been forced into yet another day of strike action today.”<\/p>\n