Up to a third of flights canceled at Paris-Orly, several regional airports affected: air traffic will remain disrupted at least until Wednesday due to a strike by air traffic controllers against pension reform.
The air traffic controllers’ strike against pension reform continues. Nearly a third of flights should be canceled at Paris-Orly. The disruptions will take place at least until Wednesday.
Since the beginning of the social movement, the General Directorate of Civil Aviation (DGAC) has been regularly forced to ask airlines to give up part of their flight program departing from and arriving at certain airportsto adapt it to the number of air traffic controllers at their post and avoid even greater disruption.
Such preventive reductions, in place for much of this week, will continue throughout the weekend and until at least next Wednesday, including a new day of national interprofessional mobilization scheduled for Tuesday by the inter-union.
A difficult Sunday
On Saturday, the DGAC required the cancellation of 15% of flights at Orly, the second French airport by passenger volume, and 20% at Marseille-Provence, Bordeaux-Mérignac and Lyon-Saint-Exupéry.
Sunday promises to be more difficult for passengers transiting through Orly, where 33% of flights will be canceled, while this proportion will remain at 20% in Lyon and Marseille. “For the first time since the beginning of the social movements linked to the pension reform”, the connections to Corsica, known as “public service lines” in the name of territorial continuity, are concerned, deplored Air Corsica, forced to cancel three connections to the Island of Beauty on Sunday.
In Marseille, the companies will also have to cancel 20% of their program on Monday, just like at Paris-Orly on the same day. Tuesday and Wednesday, 20% of flights will be assigned to Orly, Marseille, Toulouse and Bordeaux, the DGAC announced on Friday evening.
Last-minute cancellations not to be ruled out
As a result, Air France indicated that it would be able to provide “nearly 8 out of 10 flights between Paris-Orly and certain French airports” from Friday to Monday. Neither long-haul flights nor those departing from or arriving at Paris-Charles de Gaulle will be affected, according to the company, which has not yet communicated on Tuesday and Wednesday.
However, she warned that “last minute delays and cancellations cannot be ruled out” and stressed that her customers “affected by canceled flights are notified individually”.
Its sister company, the “low-cost” Transavia specializing in short and medium-haul, for its part canceled nearly 60 flights in total from Friday to Saturday. It has not yet published its forecast for the following days.
Repercussions on all European traffic
Beyond the airports, work stoppages by air traffic controllers also affect the Air Navigation En Route Centers (CRNA), which manage aircraft outside the take-off and landing phases and which transit through French airspace. . They therefore have repercussions on all European traffic.
Friday evening, at the start of weekend departures, many French airports were affected by significant delays: two hours from Toulouse, 1h20 in Lyon, as much on arrival in Marseille, according to the online dashboard of the DGAC.
“Significant delays”, greater than 45 minutes, also affect planes transiting through the areas covered by the CRNAs of Brest and Marseille, noted for its part the pan-European air traffic surveillance body, Eurocontrol.
