Hopes Move Will Avoid Expected Widespread Customer Disruptions Over Christmas Period

Ryanair has written to the pilot unions in Ireland, the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal inviting each of them to talks to recognize these unions as the representative body for pilots in Ryanair in each of these countries, as long as they establish Committees of Ryanair pilots to deal with Ryanair issues, as Ryanair will not engage with pilots who fly for competitor airlines in Ireland or elsewhere.

Ryanair will now change its long standing policy of not recognizing unions in order to avoid any threat of disruption to its customers and its flights from pilot unions during Christmas week. Ryanair now calls on these pilot unions to call off the threatened industrial action on Wednesday so that its customers can look forward to travelling home for Christmas without the threat or worry of pilot strikes hanging over them.

“Christmas flights are very important to our customers and we wish to remove any worry or concern that they may be disrupted by pilot industrial action next week," said Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary.

"If the best way to achieve this is to talk to our pilots through a recognized union process, then we are prepared to do so, and we have written today to these unions inviting them to talks to recognise them and calling on them to cancel the threatened industrial action planned for Christmas week.

"Recognizing unions will be a significant change for Ryanair, but we have delivered radical change before, most recently when we launched Ryanair Labs and our highly successful Always Getting Better customer improvement programme in 2013.

"Putting the needs of our customers first, and avoiding disruption to their Christmas flights, is the reason why we will now deal with our pilots through recognized national union structures and we hope and expect that these structures can and will be agreed with our pilots early in the New Year.”

(Source: Ryanair news release. Image from file)

FMI: www.ryanair.com