About 40% of flights were canceled on Friday at all Paris airports and tens of thousands of passengers rearraded plans at the height of the summer travel season due to a strike by French air traffic controllers seeking better working conditions.
The disturbances began to strike airports around France on Thursday and intensify on Friday. The National Civil Aviation Authority asked the airlines to cancel 40% of flights on Friday in Charles de Gaulle, at airports Orly and Beauvais in the Paris service, half of the flights in Nice and 30% of flights in Marseille, Lyon and other cities.
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Despite preventive cancellations, the authority warned in a statement that “disturbances and long delays are to be expected in all French airports”.
Ryanair was one of the airlines that announced widespread disruptions, saying in a statement that he had canceled more than 400 flights affecting 70,000 passengers. The company said that the strike affects all its flights to French airspace, as well as traffic in and outside French airports, and has urged the European Union to reform the rules of air traffic.
One of the two unions leading the strike, UNSA-ICNA, said in a statement that there were not enough employees to manage trips by plane and that inflation is consuming wages. The unions also protest on new reform measures aimed at monitoring their work more closely, caused by a quasi-collision at Bordeaux airport.
The Minister of Transport, Philippe Tabarot, called on the Union’s requests – and their decision to strike just like French schools close for the summer and that many families are heading on vacation – “unacceptable.”
& Copy 2025 the Canadian press
