RYANAIR CALLS AGAIN ON URSULA VON DER LEYEN TO PROTECT OVERFLIGHTS AND KEEP EU SKIES OPEN

Ryanair, Europe’s No.1 airline, today (24 Apr) announced cancellations of over 300 flights, due to tomorrow’s French ATC strike on Thursday, 25^th April. This is due to France’s failure to protect overflights during its national air strikes. Even though it’s French ATC that are striking, most disrupted passengers are not flying to/from France but overfly French airspace en route to their destination (e.g., UK – Greece, Spain, Italy). French law unfairly protects domestic flights which means French flights are protected but non-French flights get cancelled. Ryanair again calls on the EU Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, to take urgent action to protect overflights, which she has failed to do for the last 5 years. EU citizens’ freedom of movement is being denied by these ATC strikes and we call on passengers to join our campaign by signing our ‘Protect Overflights: Keep EU Skies Open’ petition, which has over 2.1m signatures from Europe’s fed up passengers.

Ryanair and its 200m passengers demand that the EU Commission take the following measures in order to protect overflights during French ATC strikes;

1. Protect French overflights by law during ATC strikes as they do in Greece, Italy and Spain
2. Allow Europe’s other ATCs to manage flights over France while French ATC are on strike
3. Mandate that French ATC unions must engage in binding arbitration before calling strikes

Ryanair’s CEO Michael O’Leary said:

“French air traffic controllers are free to go on strike, that’s their right, but we should be cancelling French flights, not flights leaving Ireland, going to Italy, or flights from Germany to Spain or Scandinavia to Portugal. The European Commission under Ursula von der Leyen has failed for 5 years to take any action to protect overflights and the single market for air travel. We’re again calling on her to take action to protect overflights which will eliminate over 90% of these flight cancellations.

In June, we will have European elections, we encourage everyone to vote in these elections and demand your MEP and the European Commission to take action to protect overflights. We can’t have the skies over Europe repeatedly closed because French Air Traffic Controllers are going on strike.

Protect overflights during national ATC strikes, reduce flight cancellations and disruptions and let’s have a better summer for all of Europe’s citizens and visitors.”