Published on : Friday, August 10, 2018
The Irish airline, Europe’s largest by passenger numbers, said 396 flights were cancelled, which could affect more than 74,000 passengers.
Employees in Ireland, Germany, Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands are staging a 24-hour walkout over pay and working conditions.
Ryanair said it had informed customers as early as possible about the changes, but some said they had been given little notice.
Karen Millar wrote: “Many thanks to Ryanair for cancelling my flight home and ensuring all the de-stressing I have done on this trip is cancelled out in an instant.”
Others said they had to pay for extra nights in hotels and booking flights with other airlines.
Ryanair declined to provide a list of affected flights, but earlier this week, it said 250 flights to or from Germany would not take off on Friday. The airline posted on its website last week that in Ireland, where Ryanair said 25% of pilots were striking for the fifth time, 20 flights would be cancelled.
“Despite the regrettable and unjustified strike action taking place in five of our 37 markets on Friday, more than 2,000 Ryanair flights (85% of our schedule) will operate as normal today, carrying almost 400,000 customers across Europe,” a spokeswoman said.
“Ryanair took every step to minimise the disruption and we notified our customers as early as possible, advising them of their free move, refund or reroute options.
“The majority of customers affected have already been re-accommodated on another Ryanair flight. We want to again apologise to customers affected by this unnecessary disruption and we ask the striking unions to continue negotiations instead of calling any more unjustified strikes,” the spokeswoman added.
Tags: Ryanair