Air passengers across Europe face delays and cancellations starting today Tuesday as air traffic controllers in France go on strike for three days.
All airlines using French airports have been asked to cancel half of their services, but flights over France also will be affected.
The continuous strike action will start at 6:00 a.m. French local time today and continue until 5:59 a.m. on Friday, June 14.
British Airways said it will have “significant” cancellations affecting Paris, Nice, Lyon, and Toulouse airports.
In addition, BA warned, “Not only will there be cancellations to French flights but due to the large geographical area that France spreads, there will be delays across Europe.”
Ticket-change fees have been waived for passengers travelling on BA and its partners, American Airlines and Iberia, on fights to, from, and through Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Paris, and Toulouse. Other major airlines are all offering refunds or cancelling change fees.
Air traffic controllers in France have planned three days of strikes beginning today Tuesday, to protest a proposal by the European Commission to accelerate the integration of air traffic management systems across the Continent. In addition, their counterparts in several other European countries were expected to take more limited labor action this week.
France’s civil aviation authority made contingency plans over the weekend, asking airlines serving the country’s airports in Paris, Lyon, Nice, Marseille, Toulouse and Bordeaux to reduce their flight schedules by 50 percent from Tuesday morning until late Thursday to ease the burden on those airports, which were expected to face significant disruption.
Unions in more than a half dozen other countries, including Belgium, Hungary, Italy and Portugal, were likely to join in work-to-rule and other more symbolic actions on Wednesday, said Koen Reynaerts, a spokesman for the European Transport Workers’ Federation in Brussels, which represents more than 25,000 workers involved in managing air traffic across the region. Those actions were likely to provoke more limited delays, he said.
The moves are meant to coincide with a speech planned for Tuesday by the European Union’s transportation commissioner, Siim Kallas, in which he was expected to formally announce planned changes to European legislation to speed the transfer of responsibility for certain air traffic management functions to a central body in Brussels and away from the European Union’s 27 member states.
The proposals would also set stricter rules for compliance with a series of annual performance-improvement goals aimed at lowering air traffic management fees, reducing congestion in European skies and easing the burden on the environment.
Air France-KLM, which flew more than 226,000 passengers a day in May, said that it expected significant disruptions and was advising passengers with reservations Tuesday for a flight in France or on a European flight departing or arriving at a French airport to postpone their travel plans if possible. However, the airline said it was making arrangements to accommodate all passengers with intercontinental flight reservations Tuesday, either on its own flights or with another airline. Roughly 30 percent of the company’s flights are to or from cities outside Europe.
