The Ryanair strike, due to happen just days before Christmas, has meant that the airline could be forced to cancel flights on December 20, affecting thousands of passengers.
In light of this, the airline has now stated it will meet to talk to the pilots, writing to the unions in Ireland, the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal to discuss the issues.
This is a change to its long-standing policy of not recognising unions and the first time they have agreed to recognise the unions in its 32-year history to try
It is hoping to prevent the strike from going ahead to prevent passengers being directly affected.
Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary has said in a statement: “Christmas flights are very important to our customers and we wish to remove any worry or concern that they may be disrupted by pilot industrial action next week.
“If the best way to achieve this is to talk to our pilots through a recognised union process, then we are prepared to do so, and we have written today to these unions inviting them to talks to recognise them and calling on them to cancel the threatened industrial action planned for Christmas week.
“Recognising unions will be a significant change for Ryanair, but we have delivered radical change before, most recently when we launched Ryanair Labs and our highly successful Always Getting Better customer improvement programme in 2013.
“Putting the needs of our customers first, and avoiding disruption to their Christmas flights, is the reason why we will now deal with our pilots through recognised national union structures and we hope and expect that these structures can and will be agreed with our pilots early in the New Year.”
Ryanair pilots have threatened the one-day strike for better working conditions as well as to gain union recognition.
The Irish pilot’s union IMPACT stated it was “solely about winning independent representation for pilots in the company”.
The threat of cancelled flights because of the Ryanair strike has been hanging over passengers with many taking to Twitter to ask whether their flights would be cancelled.
Many were unhappy with the generic answer by the low-cost airline as they were unable to confirm if flights would be cancelled or whether passengers should try and rebook flights.
Earlier this year, Ryanair was also forced to cancel thousands of flights after scheduling issues regarding pilots holiday allowance.
Passengers faced cancelled flights, delays and being left in the dark when abroad as many struggled to book alternative flights home.
The airline cancelled 2,000 flights in September, before announcing a further 18,000 would be cancelled over the winter season in November.
It will affect 700,000 passengers, it is predicted.
