On Wednesday, August 16, Ryanair’s Belgian pilots ended a two-day strike that led to the cancellation of 88 flights to and from Charleroi airport, south of Brussels. It was the fourth such strike since the start of 2023 at this hub, one of the primary facilities managed by the Irish budget airline. Ryanair has 82 hubs of its own. Their pilots, two-thirds of whom went on strike, are demanding pay raises after agreeing to a 20% pay cut during the Covid-19 crisis. Management believes that the recent automatic indexing of salaries, introduced in Belgium in response to high inflation (9.59% in 2022), meets this demand.

The pilots are determined to take further action and are also protesting against the reorganization of their working days and vacations. They argue that the current legal maximum is already reached by their 14-hour daily duty spanning five consecutive days, followed by a four-day break. These provisions were included in an agreement that Ryanair’s management finally accepted in 2019 after a lengthy resistance. At the time, a transnational movement orchestrated from Belgium led to the introduction of a minimum wage for cabin crew and better compliance with working hours.

Didier Lebbe, head of the transportation sector at the Centrale Nationale des Employés (National Central Employees), one of Belgium’s main trade unions, believes that the new strike has achieved its goal. The strike severely disrupted departures and returns of vacationers. "It was intended to have a major impact on operations, and it was successful." Nevertheless, the pilots seem to fear that Ryanair’s management is sticking to its refusal to discuss anything.

Officials at Charleroi airport, where the Irish company maintains a significant presence, deplored the repeated strikes. On Tuesday, August 15, the facilities manager Philippe Verdonck explained that passengers "didn’t care anymore" about the pilots' movement. It seems that some customers are now thinking of switching to other airlines, and some travel agencies have announced that they will no longer be booking with Ryanair due to the excessive workload caused by cancellations and compensation claims.

Could the airline decide to abandon its Belgian bases? It already threatened to do this in 2022, and in January it withdrew its aircraft once and for all from Brussels-Zaventem airport. However, the Belgian Airline Pilots Association and most trade unionists dismissed the idea of Ryanair leaving Charleroi. According to one flight attendant, this airport is one of the company’s main "cash cows." Ryanair earns much more there than at its other bases. It earns €21 per passenger, with a daily count ranging between 10,000 and 12,000 travelers.

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