On Monday Ryanair called again on the European Commission to prevent the skies over Europe being closed yet again by French ATC unions.

Ryanair regrets that it has been forced to cancel 166 flights on Tuesday (28 June), to/from and over France, in what will be the 52nd French strike since 2009, and 12th in the past 13 weeks. 30,000 Ryanair customers will have their flights cancelled, and over 100,000 others will suffer severe delays while this ATC union again (for the 12th time in 13 weeks) closes the skies over Europe.

Ryanair and other EU airlines have repeatedly called upon the Commission to introduce three simple measures which would alleviate the impact of such ATC strikes on consumers as follows:

• require French ATC unions to engage in binding arbitration instead of strikes to resolve their problems, or
• allow Europe’s other ATCs to operate overflights over France while their unions are on strike
• require that flights over France are protected while French unions are on strike

Ryanair advised customers travelling today to check the status of their flight on the Ryanair.com website before travelling to the airport and urged all customers to sign its Keep Europe’s Skies Open petition, which it will present to the European Commission when it accrues a million signatures.

Ryanair’s Kenny Jacobs said:

“It is time for action by the European Commission following this latest French ATC strike aimed at disrupting as many travel plans as possible. The frequency of these strikes, right in the middle of the holiday season only serves to underline how urgent action is required to help reduce the impact of these strikes.
After last week’s Brexit vote in the UK, the EU Commission must begin to deliver real benefits for consumers, and urgent action to ameliorate the effects of these repeated French ATC strikes and prevent them disrupting the travel plans of millions of EU citizens. We now urge every disrupted customer to sign up to Ryanair’s petition, www.KeepEuropesSkiesOpen.com, and when we gather one million signatures, we will present this petition to the European Commission to force it to finally take necessary action.”