The cancellation will affect about 50 thousand passengers across Europe.
Flight delays and cancellations are expected in Europe on Thursday, April 25, after authorities failed to reach an agreement with some French air traffic control workers to avert a strike, Reuters writes.
It is noted that the French civil aviation authority DGAC asked airlines to cancel 75% of flights on Thursday at Paris Orly airport, 55% of flights at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport and 65% of flights at Marseille.
The cancellation will affect about 50,000 passengers across Europe, as air traffic controller strikes in France often affect travel in Europe, restricting not only flights into France but also through the country’s airspace.
The cancellations come even as France’s largest air traffic controllers union, SNCTA, said it would end its strike on April 25 after reaching an agreement with management over working conditions. It is noted that the agreement with SNCTA was concluded too late to avoid disruptions in traffic, and discussions with other unions have not yet been completed.
Thus, the budget airline Ryanair is canceling more than 300 flights scheduled for Thursday. Ryanair called on the European Union to provide legal protection for flights during air traffic controller strikes and allow other European controllers to control flights in French airspace.
“French air traffic controllers can go on strike, that’s their right, but we should be canceling French flights, not flights flying from Ireland to Italy or from Germany to Spain or from Scandinavia to Portugal,” Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary said.
In total, air traffic control strikes in Europe caused 16,000 flights to be canceled and 85,000 delayed last year.
Strikes in Europe
At the turn of the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024, Germany was also in the throes of numerous strikes by transport workers, which directly affected passenger traffic in the country.
In April 2024, the German union Verdi reached a pay deal for some 25,000 security workers to prevent further strikes that were bringing airport operations to a standstill.
