O’Leary on Wednesday (31 May) said France should sacrifice some of its connectivity during the strikes to ensure the smooth passage of other flights, particularly intra-European services.

Over the past five months, European air traffic controllers have gone on strike for 57 days, leading to delays and disruption across the continent. Industrial action, particularly in France, has hit short-haul carriers such as Ryanair hardest, as the majority of their services fly over the country.

Between January and May, O’Leary said Ryanair had been forced to cancel 1,200 flights, while another 17,600 Ryanair flights faced delays, impacting hundreds of thousands of travellers.

“Protect 100% of overflights and if there have to be flight cancellations, cancel the French domestic and short-haul flights,” said O’Leary, speaking in Brussels. “We’re being forced to cancel flights, passengers and their families are losing their summer holidays,” he said.

French domestic and outbound short-haul services have been protected under France’s minimum service laws, while in countries such as Italy, Spain and Portugal, the balance is reversed with there being legislation to protect overflights.

“The French have a lot of alternatives – they can get around France if their flights are cancelled,” O’Leary continued. “But people flying from Portugal to Denmark, from the UK to Italy or from Greece to Ireland don’t have alternatives. So the French policy of disproportionately cancelling overflights is manifestly unfair.”

O’Leary, who on Wednesday handed over a petition signed by 1.2 million people calling for overflights to be protected, also urged the commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, to deliver other passenger protections, including enforcing binding arbitration for ATC disputes.

“One of the great freedoms of Europe is the freedom of movement,” said O’Leary. “You cannot have the single market closed at the whim of a French ATC strike.”

‘A f****d up system’

ATC regulation wasn’t the only thing on Ryanair boss O’Leary’s mind, who used the briefing to challenge the commission to apply its environmental legislations to the wider aviation sector.

Under current laws, only short-haul airlines operating within Europe are required to pay environmental taxes, despite – O’Leary claimed – long-haul and transit flights contributing more than 50% of the sector’s CO2 emissions on the continent.

“The richest and smallest group of passengers, who are creating the majority of pollution for air travel, are completely exempt from paying any environmental taxes,” O’Leary said. “Only Europe could design a completely f****d up system like this. Let’s reward the rich and let the peasants pay.”

Elsewhere, the O’Leary accused Lufthansa of using the €6 billion state aid it received from the German government during the pandemic, which has now been forced to give back, to expand its monopoly in Germany at the expense of competitors.

“Lufthansa has used that model to dramatically boost its dominance in the German market,” he said. “They encouraged airports to increase their charges, [turning] the German airports into the most expensive airports in Europe. And as a result, easyJet, Ryanair and everybody [else] have retreated from the German market.”