High Court tells Ryanair to pay passengers for strike cancellations

The High Court told Ryanair to compensate passengers for hundreds of flights cancelled due to pilot strikes in 2018 in the first court order against an airline led by the UK aviation regulator. Three years ago, Ryanair pilots and cabin crew took industrial action in an attempt to secure better pay and conditions across large parts of its network. On one of the worst days of the strikes, the airline had to cancel 400 flights, or 15% of its daily total, at the height of the summer holiday season. The payouts are likely to be E250 per passenger for most journeys, which are short-haul, and E400 for a smaller number of longer distance flights. That could result in costs running into the mid-single digits of millions as more than 15,000 customers are thought to have been affected. Ryanair declined to comment. Europe’s biggest low-cost carrier can appeal against the verdict. It had refused to pay compensation to passengers on the grounds that the delayed flights counted as “extraordinary circumstances”, therefore exempting them from compensation under European rules on air passengers’ rights. The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which took legal action against the airline at the end of 2018, disputed that, claiming passengers were protected by law to compensation.<br/>