Next Ryanair strike on Friday affects 30,000 passengers

Ryanair has cancelled 190 flights around Europe this Friday (28 September) in the latest round of strike action by cabin crew in Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal and Germany.

The cancellations will affect about 30,000 passengers and represent about 8% of the budget airline's flights on the day. It is not yet clear how many Belgian services will be affected.

The unions taking part are calling for better working conditions, including employment contracts and social protection in each worker's country of residence, instead of under Irish law.

Belgian trade union CNE said in a statement: "This situation only reinforces our opinion that Ryanair does not respect anything: neither its workers, nor the legislation that it violates with impunity, nor the customers it will leave in disarray by cancelling their flight at the last minute."

Ryanair spokesman Kenny Jacobs said it had done its "utmost to avoid" the strike action.

"These repeated unnecessary strikes are damaging Ryanair’s business and our customer confidence at a time when oil prices are rising strongly," he said.

"If they continue, it is inevitable that we will have to look again at our capacity growth this winter and in summer 2019.

"We hope these unions will see common sense and work with us to finalise agreements for the benefit of our pilots and cabin crew over the coming weeks without further disrupting our customers or our flights."

Passengers affected by this latest Ryanair strike are encouraged to make contact with Belgian consumer protection association Test-Achats, which is bringing a number of test cases to a small claims court to force the airline to pay compensation under the EU directive on late and cancelled flights.

Ryanair suffered a series of strikes over the peak summer travel period, with coordinated action by pilots and cabin crew in several European countries, affecting hundreds of thousands of travellers.

Since then, the budget airline has agreed wage increases and improvements in working conditions with a number of unions, notably in the UK, Ireland and Italy.