Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Corder.

It's Wednesday the 16th of July, a month which didn't begin brilliantly for, well, a couple of hundred thousand passengers who had their flights cancelled and about a million more whose flights were heavily delayed.

The reason was a strike by French

air traffic controllers. The airline that was obliged to cancel more flights than any other was

Ryanair, Europe's biggest budget airline. And I think it's fair to say that they're tiny bit cheesed off with what happened

and indeed with the response of the European Commission. So what's going on? Very good question

for the Director of Communications of Ryanair, Jade Kerwin. Jade, you're very welcome. That was all in

the past. So should we just forget all

about it and move on? Absolutely not, Simon. We're not giving up that easy. Look, I think it's an

issue that arrives each and every year. These recreational French air traffic control strikes

seem to loom up every time we have a busy travel weekend. I'm sure you're aware it was the

school holidays in France

that weekend. So I think they chose and their timing probably quite opportunistically. But again,

look, I think it's important to point out that we don't have an issue with the French air traffic

control or striking. And I want to make clear that that's not the situation that we're debating

here. While we are cheathed off with, as you that's not the situation that we're debating here. While we are

cheats off with, as you say, is the fact that the French air traffic controllers are allowed to

strike without protecting overflight. And that's been a really big bone of contention for us

over the years. And particularly two weeks ago, on the 5th and 6th of July, where we

ourselves had to cancel 500 flights impacting over 70,000 Ryanair passengers. But as you mentioned,

a million passengers were affected across Europe as a result of cancellations delays across

the wider network as well.

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