From Ryan Air

I'd relegate an email like that to the trash purely for the horrendous grammar. Not sure what they hoped to achieve with that.

Was that the entire message?

They wanted a petition signed.

For clarity, and not that I am trying to insert a petition drive onto the forum, here is the text from the ryanair site:

So far in 2023, French ATC (Air Traffic Control) strikes have forced Ryanair to cancel over 4000 flights mainly overflying France.
It is unacceptable that France uses Min Service Legislation to protect French flights during these repeated ATC strikes, while overflights, none of which are operating to/from France, suffer all these cancellations. This is unfair. The EU must act now to protect overflights and the EU Single Market.
Ryanair has repeatedly called on the EU Commission and Ursula von der Leyen to take action to protect EU passengers and overflights during repeated French ATC strikes. Ryanair calls on all passengers to sign our petition.

Ah, now this post makes sense !!! I didn't understand it earlier.

O'Leary is absolutely right by the way. These French strikes have indeed caused headaches for tons of European flights.

The irony is that very few striking AT Controllers have been striking and in turn causing this effect. In fact the main French union representing air traffic controllers hasn't been part of any of the strikes for months.. But the French civil aviation authority has to assume the worst (or at least that is the policy they have adopted), so when they get notice that a strike is filed, they pro-actively put in motion cuts as if the strike is going to be prescribed to a certain amount -- they figure it is better to positively cancel flights in advance and make those plans so that airlines and passengers can make alternative plans, rather than cascading failures hitting as a surprise. It's a perverse result of "good" planning.

Based on the actual number of strikers, there shouldn't have been many disruptions at all.

I will have to find the article that explained all this. I found it absolutely fascinating.

Airlines in the U.S. are also experiencing problems because of a lack of air traffic controllers. We had a big air traffic controller strike in 1981 when Ronald Reagan fired thousands of striking workers. Now their replacements are retiring, and the FAA has not had luck replacing and restaffing all our air traffic control towers and facilities.

Thousands of U.S. flights have been cancelled due to the FAA requesting that airlines pare back their flight schedules.

Unfortunately labor strikes and ATC shortages are a worldwide issue.

When we travel, we often have to make a Plan B in the case of a work shortage, etc. We had to rent a car recently in Rome to get to Civitavecchia when they had a rail strike the day we were taking a train to the cruise port.