HOLIDAYMAKERS travelling through French airports face disruption today due to a strike by air traffic controllers.
The French civil aviation authority said all the country’s airports would be affected and estimated that 50 per cent of flights from Paris-Orly airport and 20 per cent from Paris-Charles de Gaulle would be cancelled.
The strike, which began last night and is due to continue until tomorrow morning, is in protest at the planned merger of European air traffic control networks, which unions say will result in job losses.
Air France said all its long-haul flights would depart on schedule today, while 80 per cent of its short- and medium-haul flights at Charles de Gaulle and 50 per cent of short- and medium-haul routes at Orly would operate. A separate strike by car park staff at Orly will have no effect on flights.
While acknowledging that air traffic controllers had “difficult jobs”, minister for transport Dominique Bussereau yesterday described the union’s decision to strike during the school holiday period as “completely inappropriate and wrong”. The unions are obliged to comply with minimum service rules, notably on routes linking mainland France to Corsica and its overseas territories.
The striking unions, which say they represent half of all French controllers, are opposed to a plan to merge the Belgian, Dutch, French, German, Luxembourg and Swiss air traffic control networks to create a new bloc known as “Fabec”.
With air traffic expected to increase by up to 50 per cent over the next 15 years, the European Union wants to make the continent’s air traffic systems more efficient by grouping those of different member states in a number of integrated blocs. French unions favour looser co-operation and the retention of their own employment conditions.
In Spain, meanwhile, the government said it could deploy military air traffic controllers to work at the country’s commercial airports.
Spain’s social security services are investigating whether the 32 per cent of civil air traffic controllers in Barcelona who were on sick leave yesterday were ill or whether they were engaged in unofficial industrial action, development minister José Blanco said.
Spain cut controllers’ pay and reduced their overtime allowance in February.