The situation at airports throughout Europe is getting very complicated this summer as the lack of personnel after the layoffs during the pandemic is joined by very high demand for travel and strikes by cabin crew as there were flight cancellations and big delays yesterday, one of the biggest flight days of the summer.
Yesterday (Friday) there was congestion at nearly all airports in Spain as strikes by both Ryanair and EasyJet clashed on the same day, but fortunately the Canary Islands were not that badly affected. In total, there were 30 flights cancelled (22 by Ryanair and 8 by EasyJet) and 242 delayed, according to USO, the convening union.
Ryanair cabin crew are demanding that the airline sits down again at the negotiating table to sign the first collective agreement, so they can have "the same labour rights as the rest of workers in Spain." However, the USO are claiming that the airline has sacked eight members of staff for "not obeying illegal orders from the airline."
Ryanair defends this by saying that: “These crew members ignored the legal requirement to operate the minimum flight services.” The next strike days are scheduled for July 18th, 19th, 20th, 21st, 25th, 26th, 27th and 28th.
Regarding EasyJet, their next strikes are scheduled for today (16th), tomorrow (17th), and then the 29th, 30th and 31st of July. Their cabin crew want a pay increase of 40% on their base salary, which is currently 950 euros a month, but the general coordinator of USO-Easyjet, Miguel Galán, says that the airline "flatly refuses" to negotiate any new terms.
They are maintaining their decision not to raise workers' pay in 2022, and have told customers that they will do "everything possible to minimize interruptions”. In addition, they claim that they offered a 13% salary increase from January 1st 2023 which has been "rejected".
Airline have already cancelled 16,000 flights in Europe for August:
These problems of strikes and lack of staff that are causing congestion at airports has meant that European airlines have already cancelled 15,800 flights for the month of August, 2% of the total schedule and 0.6% of operations worldwide, according to Cyrium.
Turkish Airlines have cancelled the highest number with 4,408 fewer flights, followed by British Airways (3,600 cancellations), EasyJet (2,045), Lufthansa (1,888) and Wizz Air (1,256). These cancellations are mainly due to the lack of staff due to staff cuts in the pandemic, but there are also strikes similar to those in Spain.
