Ryanair Cancels 400 Flights Because of the French ATC Strikes
Announcing the news, O’Leary said that the cancellations that took place on Tuesday, June 6, account for one in eight flights scheduled by the airline and urged the Commission of the European Union to take measures as soon as possible, AtoZSerwisPlus.com reports.
“Again today, we have had to cancel just about 400 flights out of the 3,200 flights we had scheduled to operate. All of these flights have been cancelled because of French ATC strikes. The vast majority of these flights are overflights and not going to France,” O’Leary said.
As the Independent explains, thousands of passengers have been affected by the cancellations, pushing Ryanair to come out with an official message criticising the move.
O’Leary said called the decision to cancel overflights passing through the airspace of France “utterly indefensible” and, at the same time, accused the French authorities of prioritising domestic flights.
According to the Independent, air traffic controllers joined other unions on Tuesday in a protest against the decision of President Emmanuel Macron to raise the retirement age to 64.
The air traffic control strike forced hundreds of overflight cancellations, and since so many passengers have been affected by this, Ryanair is now pushing for the Commission of the EU to force France to protect overflights when such strikes are taking place.
Ryanair said that so far in 2023, French ATC strikes had forced the airline to cancel more than 4,000 flights that mainly overfly France.
This has been seen as unacceptable, and for this reason, the airline submitted a petition to Ursula von der Leyen. The petition through which the EU citizens are demanding action to protect overflight during French ATC strikes has so far been signed by more than one million people.
“Ryanair and over 1.1m fed-up passengers call on Ursula von der Leyen to take urgent action to protect overflights and EU citizens’ freedom of movement during the French ATC strike taking place Tues 6th June,” Ryanair wrote.
Moreover, in the video message posted on Twitter, O’Leary said that they respect the right of the French ATC union to go on strike. However, he stressed that if they continue to go on with the strikes, French domestic flights should get cancelled.
He further said that it is indefensible that flights going from Spain to Germany or from Poland to Portugal are being cancelled and called for this “scandal” to be stopped.
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