RYANAIR has agreed to recognise pilot unions to avoid widespread disruption to flights over the Christmas period.
The airline announced this morning that it has written to the pilot unions in Ireland, Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal inviting each of them to talks to recognise these unions as the representative body for pilots in Ryanair in each of these countries.
The airline said the recognition comes only if unions establish Committees of Ryanair pilots to deal with Ryanair issues, as Ryanair will not engage with pilots who fly for competitor airlines in Ireland or elsewhere.
Ryanair will now change its long standing policy of not recognising unions in order to avoid any threat of disruption to its customers and its flights from pilot unions during Christmas week.
The Irish airline also called on pilot unions to call off the threatened industrial action on Wednesday December 20 so that customers 'can look forward to travelling home for Christmas without the threat or worry of pilot strikes hanging over them.'
Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary said: “Christmas flights are very important to our customers and we wish to remove any worry or concern that they may be disrupted by pilot industrial action next week.
"If the best way to achieve this is to talk to our pilots through a recognised union process, then we are prepared to do so, and we have written today to these unions inviting them to talks to recognise them and calling on them to cancel the threatened industrial action planned for Christmas week.
"Recognising unions will be a significant change for Ryanair, but we have delivered radical change before, most recently when we launched Ryanair Labs and our highly successful Always Getting Better customer improvement programme in 2013.
"Putting the needs of our customers first, and avoiding disruption to their Christmas flights, is the reason why we will now deal with our pilots through recognised national union structures and we hope and expect that these structures can and will be agreed with our pilots early in the New Year.”
