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Belfast Live
Belfast Live
National
Alison O'Reilly & Cormac O'Shea

Spain holidays: Ryanair crew announce 12 new strike dates

Ryanair cabin crew have announced 12 new strike dates in Spain that will all come during the busy month of July.

Cabin crew will strike on July 12 to 15, 18 to 21 and 25 to 28 across the 10 Spanish airports where Ryanair operates, the unions said in a statement.

It comes off the back of multiple strike dates in June that had minimal impact on Irish tourists heading on their holidays.

Read more: Warning to tourists over fines as new beach rule introduced in Spain

In a statement on Saturday, Ryanair said it expected "minimal (if any) disruption to its flight schedules in July."

It added that "Air Traffic Control (ATC) strikes and airport staff shortages across Europe (which are beyond Ryanair's control) may however cause some minor disruption and passengers whose flights are disrupted... will be notified by email/SMS."

It comes as passengers due to travel on 16 Aer Lingus flights experienced travel chaos over the weekend as flights were cancelled due to staff shortages caused by Covid-19 and industrial action.

The check in area at Dublin Airport (Colin Keegan)

Aer Lingus was forced to cut three return flights on Saturday between Dublin and London, Dublin and Amsterdam and a return flight between London and Knock.

The airline also announced a further three cuts to its scheduled flights on Sunday, including routes between Dublin and Lisbon, Dublin and Milan and between Dublin and Amsterdam.

Industrial action by ground-handling workers at Lyon Airport in France led to the cancellation of two return flights to Lyon yesterday.

The 16 flight cancellations follow the dozens of cancellations earlier in the week.

In a statement, an Aer Lingus spokesperson said: “Due to a spike in Covid cases, Aer Lingus has been forced to cancel three return flights on Saturday 2nd July, and three return flights on Sunday 3rd July.

“Additionally, ground handling industrial action at Lyon Airport has required the cancellation of two return flights to Lyon on Saturday 2nd July.

“Just over 1% of Aer Lingus flights have been impacted by cancellations in June.

“Aer Lingus wishes to apologise to those impacted and teams at the airline are working to re-accommodate impacted passengers on the next available services as efficiently as possible.

"Aer Lingus anticipated the return of demand for travel once Covid restrictions were removed and built appropriate buffers into our plans in order to deal with a reasonable level of additional disruption.

“System pressures and ongoing issues at some airports and among third party suppliers have created considerable operational challenges which have been compounded by a significant spike in Covid cases in recent days.

“We have shared detail regarding customers’ rights the airlines’ obligations under Regulation (EC) 261/2004.”

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