The call for a strike by Ryanair and Easyjet cabin crew in Spain has had less impact than expected by the organizers, the USO and Sitcpla unions. But even so, hundreds of passengers suffered problems yesterday to arrive or leave the country by plane in the great holiday operation in July. With such a number of scheduled flights in the Aena network –24,600 between Friday and Monday–, any incident affects a considerable number of travelers at a critical time for the air sector.
At El Prat airport, one of the most affected by the strike this Friday, four flights were cancelled, while another 56 with origin or destination in Barcelona suffered delays. In total, El Prat had 924 operations scheduled yesterday, while between today and Monday 3,531 flights are scheduled, including departures and arrivals.
Delays sometimes exceeded three hours, according to the unions, and some passengers with canceled flights complained that the airline had not notified them of the situation. Arriving at the airport, they found their flight cancelled. Ryanair concentrated most of the incidents in Barcelona, ??with 42 delayed flights (16 departures and 26 arrivals), while EasyJet recorded 14 delays (8 departures and 6 arrivals).
In total, the strike caused six cancellations and 277 delays in Spain at Ryanair, while Easyjet had to suspend nine flights and delay another 54, indicated USO and Sitcpla. In the case of the Irish low cost, it was the fifth day of strike, while the British lived its first day of protests of the nine scheduled for this month. The stoppages will continue this weekend. In both cases, the workers demand better wages and working conditions, while the airlines lament the “lack of will” of the convening unions to reach agreements.
Be that as it may, relations between the two parties are currently broken, with crossed accusations of boycotts and legal breaches. The unions again pointed out Ryanair yesterday by ensuring that the company considers 100% of the flights to be minimum services and, therefore, “prevents the workers’ right to strike.” From EasyJet, they claimed to be “disappointed” with this action “at a critical time for the industry, especially since we are making considerable progress in the negotiations towards a new collective agreement, and we hope that USO will negotiate again.” “We would like to continue the constructive dialogue with them,” they added, while denying having had to cancel any flights.
The situation in the air sector is convulsive because social conflict has been compounded by personnel and management problems at major airports, such as Heatrow, Gatwick, Amsterdam or Charles de Gaulle. And in a network industry like the airline industry, the problems of one airport have an impact on the rest. Just yesterday, there were cancellations of dozens of flights in London and Paris due to protests and saturation of the runways – they do not have workers to absorb all the demand.
In this sense, the Spanish Association of Air Transport users, businessmen and professionals yesterday demanded that the Government prevent by law the possibility of calling strikes “on dates indicated as those chosen by the Ryanair cabin crew” that affect “the general interest and tourism in particular.
