Hundreds of Ryanair flights will not take off as planned today due to pilot strikes in five countries.
Staff in Ireland, Germany, Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands are staging a 24-hour walkout over pay and conditions.
The airline said 396 flights have been cancelled as a result, forcing passengers who planned to travel on Friday to rebook or take different routes.
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Union chiefs representing Ryanair staff striking today have said the industrial action could have been averted if the airline had agreed early to a third-party mediator overseeing talks.
Forsa, which represents Irish workers, also claimed the company had used the threat of redundancy in a bid to "frighten pilots into backing down".
The union said in a statement:
The company's belated recognition of the need for an independent third-party facilitator, which Forsa has been suggesting throughout this impasse, meant today's strike by Irish-based pilots went ahead.
This demonstrates the company's lack of experience of industrial relations.
Similarly, its threat of redundancies and compulsory transfers of Irish-based staff to Poland was a crude and ineffective attempt to frighten pilots into backing down.
Instead it had the effect - predictable to those well-versed in Irish industrial disputes - of reinforcing their resolve.
Forsa regrets the inconvenience that today's strike - and the four previous strikes staged by the airline's directly-employed Irish-based pilots - have caused to passengers and potential passengers.
Company management has previously attempted to paint its Irish pilots as outliers, saying that it was doing deals and conducting successful negotiations elsewhere in Europe.
The fact that the company is facing separate disputes in four other countries today - and experienced strikes by cabin crew in a number of jurisdictions a couple of weeks ago - shows that this is not the case.
The company is struggling with its industrial relations in many places.
Ryanair has said that 85 per cent of its scheduled flights - more than 2,000 - were operating as normal today despite the strike.
In a statement, the airline said:
Ryanair took every step to minimise the disruption and we notified our customers as early as possible advising them of their free move, refund or reroute options.
The majority of customers have already been accommodated on another Ryanair flight.
We want to again apologise to customers affected by this unnecessary disruption and we ask the striking unions to continue negotiations instead of calling any more unjustified strikes.
Hundreds of Ryanair flights have been grounded today due to pilot strikes in five countries.
Staff in Ireland, Germany, Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands are staging a 24-hour walkout over pay and conditions.
The airline said 396 flights have been cancelled as a result, forcing passengers who planned to travel on Friday to rebook or take different routes.
Ryanair planes have a capacity of 189, meaning more than 74,000 passengers could be affected.
The Irish budget airline said the strikes were "regrettable and unjustified" and called for unions to come back to the negotiating table.
The walkout is the biggest in the Ryanair's history, as The Independent's travel correspondent Simon Calder reports:
Thousands of passengers affected by Ryanair's biggest strike ever
Stansted and Manchester are the UK airports with the highest number of cancellationsPlease allow a moment for the liveblog to load.
