French air traffic controllers' walkout disrupts early summer season travel

TimesLIVE

16 hours ago

French air traffic controllers began a two-day strike on Thursday to protest over staff shortages and ageing equipment, leading to hundreds of flight cancellations as the summer season gets under way.
France's civil aviation agency DGAC told airlines to revise their schedules, including at Paris' Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport — one of Europe's busiest hubs — forcing the carriers to cancel flights.
Air France, France's largest airline, said it adapted its flight schedule, without giving details, but it was maintaining its full long-haul flight schedule. IAG-owned British Airways was using larger aircraft to mitigate disruption.
Ryanair said it had been forced to cancel 170 flights affecting more than 30,000 passengers on Thursday and Friday.
'Again European families are held to ransom by French air traffic controllers going on strike,' Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary said. 'It makes no sense and is abundantly unfair on EU passengers and families going on holiday.'
EasyJet said it would cancel 274 flights on Thursday and Friday.
The strike coincided with the start of the European summer holidays, one of the busiest travel periods of the year.
France's second-largest air traffic controllers' union, UNSA-ICNA, said its members were striking over persistent understaffing, outdated equipment and a toxic management culture. Another union, USAC-CGT, said the DGAC had failed to comprehend the frustration felt by controllers.
'The DGAC is failing to modernise the tools essential to air traffic controllers, though it continues to promise all necessary resources are being made available,' UNSA-ICNA said.
'The systems are on their last legs and the [air traffic control] agency is constantly asking more of its staff to compensate for its difficulties,' it added.
The DGAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the trade unions' concerns. Their complaints echo grievances expressed by air traffic controllers in the US over outdated infrastructure, dramatic staffing shortfalls and failing technology.
French transport minister Philippe Tabarot called the unions' demands unacceptable.
The DGAC asked airlines to cut one in four flights in and out of Paris airports and almost half of flights out of the capital on Friday. Elsewhere, airlines were asked to reduce flights by 30%-50%, with the south particularly hard hit.
'Despite these preventive measures, disturbances and significant delays are to be expected at all French airports,' the agency said, urging passengers to change their flights if they could.
Luxair Luxembourg Airlines warned that 'additional delays and schedule changes are possible across other destinations, as air traffic rerouting and capacity constraints may cause knock-on effects throughout the network.'
Ryanair's O'Leary urged the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, to reform EU air traffic control services to ensure adequate staffing at peak periods and to protect overflights — those that pass over a country or region without landing — during national strikes.