Ryanair canceled 300 flights on Thursday, including one from Lithuania Business

The company announced the canceled flights on Wednesday evening.

“More than 300 flights are being canceled due to an ATC strike in France tomorrow, Thursday 25 April. This was due to France’s failure to protect flights during its own national strikes. Although French air traffic control is on strike, most of the disrupted passengers are not flying to and/or from France, but are flying over French airspace on their way to their destination (e.g. UK – Greece, Spain, Italy). French law unfairly protects domestic flights, meaning French flights are protected but non-French flights are cancelled,” the statement said.

However, the strike of French air traffic controllers, which was supposed to take place on Thursday, was cancelled.

One flight was canceled at the Vilnius airport for Thursday – the Vilnius-Paris (Bovė; Beauvais) trip scheduled for 22:25, operated by “Ryanair”. The company canceled a number of flights from Beauvais airport in various directions.

The remaining Ryanair flights from Lithuania will take place as planned, according to data from Lithuanian airports.

Passengers of other airlines operating in Lithuania flying to France on Thursday should not experience any problems. airBaltic, which flies to Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, is also going to operate the evening flight as planned, and Wizz Air will also fly passengers to the same Beauvais on Thursday.

Addressed the head of the European Commission

The cancellations come despite one of France’s largest unions, SNCTA, calling off strike action. They were canceled too late to avoid disruption after France’s civil aviation authority asked airlines to cancel some flights, according to The Guardian.

However, as mentioned, a statement issued by Ryanair emphasized that the strike would have most affected passengers who fly over French territory without landing there. It was estimated that around 50,000 people would have been affected during the strikes. company passengers.

The airline called on European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to take steps to ensure that flights over France are protected by law during air traffic control strikes, that other European controllers can control flights over France during strikes and that unions’ right to call sudden strikes be limited.

Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary said: “Air traffic controllers in France are free to strike, that’s their right, but we should be canceling flights to France, not flights from Ireland to Italy or flights from Germany to Spain or the Scandinavian countries to Portugal.

“The European Commission, under the leadership of Ursula von der Leyen, has not taken any action in five years to protect flights over airports and the single air transport market. We call again on it to take action to protect flights over airports that would eliminate more than 90% of of these canceled flights,” the manager was quoted as saying by The Guardian.