Due to an expected strike by air traffic controllers, companies will have to cancel Thursday April 25 75% of flights at Paris Orly airport and 65% at Paris-Roissy as well as Marseille, announced the General Management of civil aviation (DGAC) during a videoconference with them on Tuesday evening. The DGAC is also asking them to cancel 60% of flights to Toulouse and Nice, and 50% for other airports.
A few hours earlier on Tuesday, the president of the National Federation of Aviation and its Trades (FNAM), Pascal de Izaguirre, had warned that this strike movement by air traffic controllers will be “very strongly followed”. All the unions have in fact called for a strike by air traffic controllers, after the failure of negotiations on the accompanying measures for an overhaul of air traffic control.
On the same day, the National Union of Air Traffic Controllers (SNCTA), the leading union of air traffic controllers, announced to file a new strike notice for the Ascension Bridge (Thursday 9, Friday 10 and Saturday 11 May) . The union deplored, in a press release, the failure of conciliation “in particular on the question of social support” and once again gave the public authorities fifteen days to “engage in the search for solutions”.
The second air traffic controllers union, Unsa ICNA, which is also calling for a strike on Thursday, has for its part filed a new notice covering the entire month of June.
Wage increases
Mr. de Izaguirre denounced the arguments of the SNCTA, which calls for salary increases which he considers to have no impact on the French taxpayer since the DGAC budget is supplemented by fees paid by airlines. This additional cost “would ultimately be passed on to the passenger,” explained Mr. de Izaguirre, who is also CEO of Corsair. Not to mention that this would constitute “an additional element of deterioration of our competitiveness” because this cost is “borne mainly by French companies”, argued the manager.
FNAM is concerned about the deterioration of French competitiveness, whose companies lose market share each year to Turkish or Gulf companies. According to Mr. Izaguirre, France breaks the record for air traffic control strikes with an impact on the finances of the European aviation sector of 800 million euros for the period 2018-2022, including 624 million for France alone.
For comparison, in second place in this ranking we find Italy, where strikes represented a shortfall of 147 million euros over the same period, then Greece, with 22 million euros, still according to figures put forward by FNAM.
In September 2023, the SNCTA and the UNSA-ICNA, the second union among air traffic controllers, declared an Olympic truce, promising not to strike for salary reasons between now and the end of the Olympic Games (July 26 to August 11) and Paralympics (August 28 to September 8). “We discovered that it was only partial,” quipped Pascal de Izaguirre, confiding that he was not worried about the competition period itself. The sector is also expecting a “dynamic” summer. Over the first three months of the year, air traffic from, to and in France reached 96% of that of 2019 for the same period.
