Ryanair strike: 250 flights cancelled and 35,000 passengers to be hit by today’s walkouts
As many as 35,000 Ryanair passengers will be facing travel chaos this afternoon after the airline was forced into cancelling 250 flights as a result of strike action.
The fresh wave of industrial disputes, which will affect almost double the number of flights that were previously expected to be cancelled, comes as pilots and cabin crews demand better contracts and conditions.
Ryanair staff from Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Spain will all be protesting in the run-up to the weekend, with union leaders calling for employees to be given contracts in the countries where they live, rather than in Ireland where Ryanair is based.
Boss Michael O'Leary, who survived a shareholder rebellion last week but faces increasing pressure from investors, said the company had written to unions offering to move all staff to local contracts, which made the strike action "unnecessary".
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However, the Dutch pilots union said it had only verbally offered its members local contracts and had refused to put the offer in writing.
The latest walkout comes after a series of strikes at the budget airline, with hundreds of flights being terminated last month over similar issues with staff across Europe.
Ryanair's chief operations officer Peter Bellew said the action was "deeply regrettable".
"It is deeply disappointing that some of our customers and our people in Germany tomorrow will have their flights disrupted by an unnecessary strike called at short notice," he said.
Ryanair said the majority of its 2,400 flights today would not be hit by the new strikes, with roughly 35,000 of 450,000 passengers experiencing disruption.
In a statement Ryanair said: "We sincerely apologise to those customers affected by these unnecessary strikes on Friday which we have done our utmost to avoid,"
Passengers on cancelled flights were contacted on Tuesday to advise them of their options.