Hi,

I have a Ryanair booking from Belgium to the UK next Thursday on the day of the strike.

I'm waiting for the email in my inbox, but I would like to think through the options. If I get to Charleroi and the flight is cancelled due to strike action what will they give you? A rebooking onto the next available flight? A hotel voucher (I'm on the late evening flight, next flight is early next AM) ? Food and drink? Or is it better just eating the ticket and calling it the unlucky tax and booking out of Schiphol?

I would not go to CRL and spend the evening in a massive line trying to get a voucher for a poor hotel. If it is important for you to be in the UK that day, then book an alternative if you can. Note that there appears to be a strike of the railways in Belgium on July 12-14 so going to AMS might not be straightforward.

When FR cancels your flight you can request a refund of the original ticket and try to claim your expenses back, that might of course be a battle.

Beware: if you request a refund (i.e. don't accept their rebooking option, or even wait around to hear what the rebooking options would be), you lose all further rights. There can be no "claim your expenses" if you request a refund of the flight.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-cont...15(01)&from=EN

So basically:
- if you want to incur no further expense, then wait for whatever Ryanair offers, which may mean significant delays to your schedule
- if you need to "take control" of the situation and rebook yourself, all you can get back from Ryanair is the cost of the ticket you are forfeiting. All extra costs that you incur by making a new booking are at your expense.

Thank you for pointing this out!

I would check whether the flight you are supposed to take is on a plane based in Charleroi or not (it is likely to be). If you are flying to the UK in any case you shouldn't be affected on the 12th as the strike only affects DUB-based planes. I am flying BRU-DUB and luckily I am on a plane which is based in Brussels, so hopefully no cancellation there.

Hi... a few things to consider.
1. Pilots who are members of its Irish trade union will go on strike for the first time on Thursday, July 12,; Cabin crew in Belgium, Italy and Portugal will stage 48-hour strikes on 25 and 26 July, while their colleagues in Italy will stop work for 24 hours on 25 July. (Telegraph, BBC news and others).
2. Assuming your travel date is July 12, do we know what pilots are members of the Irish union? My gut feel is that it's not the crews in CRL; CRL is a major base for Ryanair so my assumption (unvalidated) is that the pilots will be Belgian and part of a different union.

In terms of what FR will give you, I would set your expectations VERY low: FR will (just about) comply with the law. The protections under EU261 in case of industrial action do include hotels, food and drink, and rebooking or refund, but it's Ryanair - so you will fight tooth and nail for all of these.

I would indeed pay your unlucky tax and make alternative arrangements. As malmostoso says there is a strike but it generally doesn't affect Thalys high-speed services so provided you can get to Brussels Midi (you don't say where your journey is starting from) then you'll be able to get to AMS. You might also want to consider Eurostar.

I would not depend on where the plane is based for anything this far in advance. Disruptions, whether weather, labor, or other, all cause the shuffling of aircraft and crew and the aircraft and crew which perform this flight today, might not do so later (if at all).

While in general that is true, this is Ryanair we are talking about. They don't have the same slack in the system that other airlines may have; planes at EVERY base have a full flying schedule and challenging block- and turnaround times.

Ryanair shows no hesitation in closing down bases, or moving planes away from a base, in response to actions that it sees as damaging to its business (and to create headlines, and "penalise" airport/authority decisions it dislikes). But the sort of day-to-day "let's move this plane from STN to DUB today; let's move this plane from CRL to CGN for tomorrow afternoon", etc, doesn't happen on a day-to-day basis in the manner suggested.

Ryanair will not be able to "ease" disruption for its Irish strike by re-directing crews and/or planes from other bases to carry out flights that can't be operated from its Irish bases; those crews and/or planes are required where they were scheduled to operate; that would involve the cancellation of services in other countries where the "strike" excuse won't get them off the hook [cancelling a Belgium to Germany flight, for example, because of a strike in Dublin simply won't get them off paying compensation to those Belgian and German passengers; whereas the customers that were due to fly to/from Ireland can't expect that compensation anyway. So why fly them that day when it is less of a financial burden on the company to leave the strike-affected customers thus affected, rather than affecting a different set of passengers, with higher recovery costs, to "rescue" the passengers that are, basically, screwed anyway? Bad commercial decision there!].

Remember that Ryanair's most recent load factor is running at around 96%, so it's not as if there are routes/bases operating with such few numbers that it would be tempting for Ryanair to cancel their day's flying and temporarily base them in Dublin just for that day.

And, besides, the now unionised pilots in other bases would probably resist this "strike breaking" in support of their Irish colleagues. They will doubtless be considering their own strike action in the near future, too.