Irish airline Ryanair has cancelled 190 flights scheduled for Friday following a strike action by worker unions in Spain, Belgium, Holland, Portugal, Italy and Germany.

The affected flights are around 8% of Ryanair’s 2,400 scheduled flights. 30,000 passengers will be affected and according to the airline, all have been notified via email or text message.

Workers outside of Ireland are disgruntled because Ryanair employs them under Irish legislation. The staff say the employment terms blocks their access to state security. Further, they are forced to receive their pay from Irish bank accounts which affects their credit rating in their home country and that queries are made through an Irish number, which makes it more expensive to call.

Ryanair said the strike is “unnecessary” and apologized to its customers by saying that Ryainair “sincerely regrets these unnecessary customer disruptions”.

Ryanair’s Kenny Jacobs said: “We sincerely apologise to those customers affected by these unnecessary strikes on Friday, which we have done our utmost to avoid, given that we have already offered these unions recognition agreements, Collective Labour Agreements, and a move to local contracts/law in 2019.

“These repeated unnecessary strikes are damaging Ryanair’s business and our customer confidence at a time when oil prices are rising strongly, and if they continue, it is inevitable that we will have to look again at our capacity growth this winter and in summer 2019.

“We hope these unions will see common sense and work with us to finalise agreements for the benefit of our pilots and cabin crew over the coming weeks without further disrupting our customers or our flights.

“When we can successfully do deals with unions in Ireland, the UK, Germany and Italy, why are some unions in Belgium, Holland and Spain not doing similar deals?”

By Airport Pickups London