Air traffic controllers strike: 70% of flights canceled this weekend at Paris-Orly airport

70 % des vols ont été annulés. (ILLUSTRATION) MAXPPP – Vincent Isore

Complicated weekend for passengers at Paris-Orly airport, France's second largest airport: 70% of flights were canceled on Saturday and as many will be on Sunday, after a call for a strike. a union of air traffic controllers.

L'Unsa-Icna, the second representative union of air traffic controllers (17% in the last professional elections), is demanding "adequate staff" , judging that an agreement signed at the end of April between the General Directorate of Civil Aviation (DGAC) and the main controllers' union, the SNCTA (60% of the votes) , does not guarantee them.

Following this call for a strike, the DGAC asked airline operators on Friday to reduce their commercial flight schedule by 70%, first for Saturday at Paris-Orly airport, before to extend this request a few hours later to Sunday. Flights to overseas territories, which are numerous at Orly, should be spared in the name of territorial continuity.

Already some disturbances on April 25

"There was about an hour and a half late arriving this morning" on maintained flights, "but the situation has clearly improved", indicated a spokesperson for the DGAC Saturday afternoon.

"This strike is absolutely unacceptable" since an agreement had been signed, denounced François Déletraz, president of the National Federation of Transport User Associations (FNAUT).

He asked for "regulation of the right to strike for a profession which is a state monopoly", on the BFMTV channel.

Air traffic had already been severely disrupted on April 25, in the middle of school holidays, at all French airports and indirectly in Europe, due to a strike French air traffic control. An agreement was reached at the last minute with the SNCTA, but too late to avoid thousands of cancellations.

The controllers were protesting against the accompanying measures for an overhaul of French air traffic control, in particular salary provisions. They demanded, among other things, a 25% increase in salaries spread over five years. If the agreement reached was not officially detailed, according to the daily Les Echos the controllers had obtained salary increases ranging from 226 to 1,001 euros per month.

On Friday, the government regretted this new strike, deploring "the behavior of some agents at the local level, who refuse to recognize the legitimacy of a majority agreement and make passengers pay the price".

But for Unsa-Icna, this salary agreement does not resolve the issue of "understaffing" which are looming at Orly, according to her, by 2027.