Ryanair strike to affect 50,000 passengers, including Dutch

Ryanair cabin crew members in Belgium, Spain and Portugal will be striking next week Wednesday and Thursday. As a result, the Irish budget airline is canceling around 600 flights, including some to and from the Netherlands. Around 50 thousand passengers will be affected, Ryanair said.

In the Netherlands Ryanair flies to and from Schiphol, Eindhoven Airport and Maastricht Aachen Airport. The cancellations affect flights to and from Belgium, Spain and Portugal on Wednesday and Thursday next week. According to Omroep Brabant, this includes five flights to and five flights from Eindhoven Airport. There are two flights from Schiphol to Malaga, Spain scheduled for those days, and one flight from Spain to the Amsterdam airport.

Affected customers were notified by email and SMS, the airline said on its website. Passengers who did not receive a message should expect that their flight will operate as scheduled.

The Ryanair cabin crew workers are striking for a salary increase and better working conditions, according to ANP.

"Ryanair sincerely apologizes to our customers for these disruptions which we have done our utmost to avoid", Kenny Jacobs of Ryanair said. "Given that Ryanair cabin crew enjoy great pay, industry leading rosters, great sales commissions, uniform allowances and sick pay, these strikes are entirely unjustified and will achieve nothing other than to disrupt family holidays, and benefit competitor airlines in Belgium, Portugal and Spain."

Ryanair pilots are also planning to strike next week Friday. According to ANP, this may result in labor actions in the Netherlands if talks with Ryanair stall. Dutch pilots' association VNV stated that it wants to postpone labor actions to August at the earliest.

Last year Ryanair also had to cancel a large number of flights to fix holiday planning problems among its staff. A surplus of vacation days and poor planning resulted in an acute shortage of pilots.