The image was reportedly staged by six crew members in protest for their treatment at Málaga Airport in the early hours of Sunday morning.
A Ryanair spokesman has rubbished the image, saying the employees spent only a short period of time in a crew room before they were moved to a VIP lounge.
The crew were part of a group of eight pilots and 16 cabin crew who claim they were left in a small room without access to food or drink, and with only eight seats.
Fernando Gandra, a delegate for SITCPLA, the Portuguese union for airline employees, said that Ryanair European Operations in Dublin was told of the situation, but there were no hotels available.
Gandra told the Daily Mail: “In the end, they were informed it was impossible to find any hotels. Friday was a bank holiday in Spain and the duty manager said all hotels were full.”
Hours later, the crews flew back to Porto on a 737 ferry flight.
The crew waited aboard that aircraft for nearly three hours while a captain was flown in from London to operate the flight, according to Gandra.
A Malaga-based first officer operated the flight as well.
When the crew asked to open the aircraft’s bar and heat up food, the operations room in Dublin responded “no, they can’t”, Gandra claimed.
He said: “‘Maybe all hotels around Málaga airport and the city were full, but for sure it would have been possible to accommodate these crews in different hotels, even ones far away from the airport.”
Ryanair's chief operations officer, Peter Bellew, tweeted that the airline was unable to find accommodation for the crew in a city left heavily damaged by the storm.
He added: “Later after this the crew moved to VIP lounge. Apologies to the crew we could not find accommodation.”
The picture first appeared on Sunday night on a Facebook page called Ryanair MUST Change.
Aviation expert Alex Macheras questioned Bellew's claim there were no free hotels in the area:
“Ryanair says it couldn't accommodate crew, as "all hotels were booked up".
“@peterbellew There are 400+ hotels in the city, & it's mid-October (low season)…?”
Ryanair responded to criticism with a statement: “This picture is clearly staged and no crew “slept on the floor”. Due to storms in Porto (13 Oct) a number of flights diverted to Malaga and as this was a Spanish national holiday, hotels were fully booked. The crew spent a short period of time in the crew room before being moved to a VIP lounge, and returned to Porto the next day (none of the crew operated flights).”
Ryanair has been hit by a series of strikes from flight crews over pay and conditions this year in the likes of Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands.
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