Ryanair called for the EU to follow the example shown by Ronald Reagan in the early 1980’s when he fired and replaced U.S. Air Traffic Controllers after they went on strike. Europe’s ATC is an essential service and these protected civil service workers should not be allowed to strike or hold passengers to ransom in this way.  National ATC providers should be deregulated and allowed to compete with each other in a system that will allow one country to manage the airspace of neighboring countries to prevent flights being cancelled or delayed during industrial action. 

Ryanair’s Stephen McNamara said “Europe’s airlines and passengers have suffered at the hands of ATC providers all summer long and now, ahead of yet another Spanish ATC strike, Ryanair is calling on the EU to take action to prevent further strike action.  Ryanair will not allow its passengers to be inconvenienced further by the selfish strike action by Europe’s ATC providers and will operate flights to/from Spain with hand-luggage only on the Wednesday 29th September. 

“Action must be taken at EU level to ensure that the ‘right to strike’ is removed from essential services such as ATC and competition must be introduced across Europe’s ATC providers to ensure that a strike in one country is not be allowed to disrupt million of passengers’ travel plans.” 

The French air traffic control strike had brought air travel to a virtual standstill, some provincial terminals did not open at all. The 24 hour strike has ground 90 percent of air travel and is expected to last until Tuesday morning. British Airways reported it had cancelled nearly 90% of its flights to France and has had to re-rout other flights around France’s air space.