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A two-day strike by air traffic controllers in France began on Thursday, disrupting flights across Europe and causing widespread delays for passengers as summer holiday season begins across the continent.
French air traffic controllers called for increased staffing and better conditions from France’s civil aviation general directorate (DGAC), the body in charge of airport security and airspace.
To respond to the disruption, the DGAC has asked airline companies to cancel a quarter of flights at Paris airports on Thursday and 40 per cent on Friday. There will also be widespread disruption at airports in the south of France, including cancellations at Nice, Lyon, Marseille and Montpellier.
The measures would affect flights passing through French airspace, airlines said, and come at the beginning of holiday season for many European countries.
British Airways indicated that it planned to use larger aircraft for some flights to accommodate passengers from cancelled flights.
“Like all airlines, due to industrial action by French air traffic control, we’ve had to make some adjustments to our schedule,” the airline, part of the International Airlines Group, said.
Ryanair, Europe’s largest airline, said on Thursday that it had cancelled 170 flights, affecting more than 30,000 passengers.
The company called for the European Commission to intervene to prevent future disruption, by reforming air-traffic control legislation. It said the EU should ensure full staffing for the first wave of daily departures and protect flights passing through French airspace during national ATC strikes.
The airline’s chief executive Michael O’Leary said the cancellations and delays of flights over French airspace en route to their destination due to the strike were “not acceptable”.
Kenton Jarvis, chief executive of rival low-cost airline easyJet, called for the French government to act to prevent future disruption from the nearly annual summer strikes by France’s air traffic controllers.
His company pointed to data from aviation body Eurocontrol that showed France accounted for more air traffic delays than any other European country.
“I am urging the French government to find long-term solutions to prevent the disruption our customers experience — and crucially protect overflying — when strike action does occur,” Jarvis said, adding that more needed to be done to limit and prevent disruption in the future.
One of the two unions leading the strikes, the USAC-CGT, said that the DGAC must “change course” blaming “chronic understaffing, an unbalanced, corporatist social agreement, authoritarian management, widespread policing, threats of further outsourcing, and a deterioration of public service” for the strikes.
France’s transport minister Philippe Tabarot described the union’s demands as “unacceptable”, saying that the government would not yield to them. He pointed to salary revisions in 2024, adding that the losses for partly state-owned AirFrance could reach millions of euros.
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