AGI – The Irish low cost airline Ryanair has canceled around 400 flights in Europe due to the 36-hour strike by French air traffic controllers that began on Monday. Chief Executive Michael O’Leary said that “the vast majority” of the cancellations concern routes whose ultimate destination is not France, but those that “overfly” that country.
“We respect French air traffic controllers’ right to strike, but if they go on strike, the flights that should be canceled are domestic or local to France,” he said in a video message posted on the airline’s Twitter account has been published. O’Leary said travelers to France had “other alternatives” such as high-speed trains by rail or road, and insisted Ryanair cancels flights “unnecessarily”. because the European Commission, “chaired by Ursula von der Leyen”, “will not intervene”.
Flights canceled across Europe
“There is no justification for canceling flights from Ireland to Italy, from Poland to Portugal or from Spain to Germany just because France wants to prioritize its domestic flights and cancel all overflights,” O’Leary said. O’Leary also recalled that last week the airline sent a petition signed by 1.1 million customers to the European Commission, calling on the EU executive to protect airspace so planes can fly over countries where Strikes are taking place, particularly in France.
According to Ryanair, there have been such in the last five months 58-day strike by air traffic controllers, Eleven times more than in 2022, forcing airlines to cancel “thousands of flights” intended to fly over the EU Spain, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom and Ireland. Meanwhile, he denounced that French law allows minimum benefits to protect domestic and short-haul flights.
“That’s unfair. France (and all other member states) should use these minimum service laws to protect traffic flying over (their territory) during air traffic controller strikes, as they are doing in Greece, Italy and Spain,” he told Irish Airline in a statement.