With Britons trying to get their heads round the new European Union EES entry/exit system and with the ETIAS visa looming, travel has become more complicated and now it appears that this summer could be chaotic. According to VisaHQ, Ryanair has sounded the alarm over a potential summer of flight chaos, telling UK travel buyers to brace for widespread cancellations if European air-traffic-control (ATC) strikes proceed as planned.
Speaking at the airline’s Q3 briefing on 21 January, CEO Michael O’Leary predicted that rolling walkouts—particularly by French controllers—would peak in May and June, disrupting up to 60 % of Western European overflights, including thousands serving British airports. Earlier this month, Ryanair, called on NATS CEO, Martin Rolfe, to resign following yet another NATS ATC system failure – this time at Birmingham Airport on Sun (11 Jan) – which caused several diversions and delays of up to 4 hours for 2,000 Ryanair passengers.
This latest outage is yet another example of NATS’ continued mismanagement. UK airspace users are paying higher charges for a declining service, while passengers are subjected to repeated and entirely avoidable delays. Martin Rolfe must immediately fix the UK’s broken ATC service, or step aside and let someone else do the job the airline stated.
But the problem is much broader. Ryanair lost more than 1,000 sectors during last July’s French strike and scrapped 933 flights in a single day earlier this month. O’Leary blasted what he called “a broken model”, urging the European Commission to fine ANSPs that fail to guarantee minimum staffing. He also renewed calls for France to permit overflights during domestic stoppages, a concession already adopted by Greece, Italy and Spain.
For UK corporates the warning is significant: Heathrow, Gatwick and Manchester all lie on routings that overfly France even for intra-UK and UK-Ireland services. Travel-management companies (TMCs) are already advising clients to build buffer days into project schedules, secure flexible tickets and stock contingency travel budgets. Airlines can reroute via Spanish or German airspace, but that lengthens journeys and adds fuel costs that may be passed on to corporate contracts.
The airline has called on EU President, Ursula von “Derlayed-Again” to urgently reform EU’s broken ATC services a number of times. Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary has said: “It is inexcusable that Europe’s worst performing ATCs in France, Spain, Germany and the UK continue to inflict avoidable delays and cancellations on millions of EU citizens every month.
Despite warnings, Europe’s ATC performance is not improving, as national providers fail to properly staff and manage their operations. EU ATC needs reform and its passengers who are paying the price. Ursula von der Leyen has done nothing to fix this ATC crisis and EU passengers deserve better. It’s time the Commission took action to end this ATC chaos and protect EU passengers’ freedom of movement.”