Irish budget carrier Ryanair looks on track to get one million signatories to a petition aimed at persuading the European Commission to "keep skies open" during strikes by French air traffic controllers.
Head of communications Jade Kirwan said more than 390,000 people had signed the petition to ask the EU to push France to put laws in place to match those in Greece and Italy.
Ryanair has demanded the commission intervene in the dispute, which has seen French ATC workers downing tools several times as part of wider French industrial action in early 2023.
"Overflights are cancelled while French flights are protected," the petition states, meaning "France protects domestic flights while non-French flights are cancelled".
"Protecting overflights is doable", Kirwan said, echoing the carrier's earlier calls for Ursula von der Leyen, the commission's president, to intervene.
"Other European ATC operators should be allowed to manage flights over France, if the french air traffic controllers won't do it themselves," Kirwan said.
Ryanair also would like to see a system in France to prevent industrial relations disputes" going from zero to a hundred", or quickly leading to workers going on strike, Kirwan said.
Kirwan said the airline expected a busy summer, despite the threat of disruptions in France, and added that the carrier's low-cost model would not be affected by the dispute or by macro-economic woes such as inflation, rising interest rates, more expensive fuel and supply of aircraft.
On April 19, the airline's chief Michael O'Leary said that the airline could trim July schedules due to delays with the delivery of 10 Boeing MAX aircraft.
"We're on the phone to Boeing every day to identify exactly how many aircraft we will be able to get and when we can get them" Kirwan said.
Ryanair would not lease aircraft to make up for any purchase delivery shortfall, according to Kirwan. "We keep our costs low," Kirwan said, adding that leasing is "an expensive thing to do" and "contradicts" the airline's business model.