Paris: Hundreds of flights to and from France were expected to be cancelled today as air traffic controllers launched a two-day strike over working conditions.<\/p>\n
The civil aviation authority has asked airlines to scrap around 40% of flights, warning of “disruption across the whole country.”<\/p>\n
Flag carrier Air France warned of “very severe disruption” to its flight schedule. Although it pledged to operate “almost all” long-haul flights, medium and short-haul services would be badly affected, it said.<\/p>\n
“We cannot rule out last-minute delays and cancellations,” the airline added.<\/p>\n
Low-cost operator Ryanair said it had been forced to cancel more than 250 flights due to the industrial action.<\/p>\n
“It’s grossly unfair that thousands of European travellers will once again have their travel plans disrupted by the selfish actions of a tiny number of French … workers,” the Irish airline fumed.<\/p>\n
Passengers had been warned well in advance and seemed to have made other plans. The situation in Paris terminals was relatively calm.<\/p>\n
“The companies have done what was needed. For the moment, there are no difficulties,” one airport source said.<\/p>\n
The strike was called by the main air traffic union SNCTA, which wants talks over the specific working conditions of their members.<\/p>\n
A particular bone of contention is the pushing back of the retirement age for air traffic controllers from 57 to 59.<\/p>\n
The union insists that for the past 10 years, talks over working conditions have taken place outside the formal structure for union-management negotiations.<\/p>\n
The FNAM aviation association strongly criticised the strike, saying it would “essentially penalise French-based airlines and their sub-contractors.”<\/p>\n
Transport Minister Alain Vidalies “regretted” that the union had chosen to call for strike action and noted that a meeting was due to take place on April 13 to discuss the specific working practices in the sector.<\/p>\n
The SNCTA had originally called the strike from March 25 to 27 but scrapped it after the Germanwings crash in the French Alps that killed 150.<\/p>\n
Further industrial action is planned from April 16 to 18 and from April 29 to May 2, key holiday periods.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Paris: Hundreds of flights to and from France were expected to be cancelled today as air traffic controllers launched a two-day strike over working conditions. The civil aviation authority has asked airlines to scrap around 40% of flights, warning of “disruption across the whole country.” Flag carrier Air France warned of “very severe disruption” to its flight schedule. Although it pledged to operate “almost all” long-haul flights, medium and short-haul services would be badly affected, it said. “We cannot rule out last-minute delays and cancellations,” the airline added. Low-cost operator Ryanair said it had been forced to cancel more than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[229],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-aviation"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10078\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}