Air traffic controllers strike: Airlines urged to cancel 40% of flights at Paris airports on Friday

Airlines are being asked to cancel 40% of their flights departing from or arriving at Paris Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports on Friday, the day before the summer holidays, due to an air traffic controller strike, the French Civil Aviation Authority (DGAC) announced on Wednesday, July 2.

This administrative demand is higher than that of Thursday, the first day of the industrial action, when only a quarter of flights will be canceled at Parisian airports. In Nice, France's third-largest hub, these cancellations will affect half of all flights on Friday, as they did on Thursday.

Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot said on Wednesday that he was "determined to stand firm" in the face of air traffic controllers' unions calling for a strike, and denounced their demands as "unacceptable . " "I know how costly these strikes are for your airlines," he said as he closed the annual congress of the National Federation of Aviation and its Professions, the sector's voice. "The demands put forward by minority unions are unacceptable, as is the decision to hold this strike at the time of the major holiday departures," he added.

The strike call was launched by the UNSA-ICNA and the USAC-CGT, which received 17% and 16% of the vote respectively in the last elections. The National Union of Air Traffic Controllers (SNCTA), the majority union, did not join the movement.

The UNCA-ICNA "denounces toxic management and failures in project management" , also highlighting a "failure to catch up with inflation". The USAC-CGT, for its part, demands "an end to the announced dogmatic policy of eliminating air traffic control services in more than twenty aerodromes" , in reference to the vast reform of air navigation services which could result in the closure of a quarter of control towers between 2028 and 2035, knowing that France has "three to four times more control towers than anywhere else in Europe" , points out the DGAC.

The unions also want to harmonize salaries with their European neighbors. French signalmen are paid on average 5,000 euros net per month, two to three times less than in the continent's major countries, notes the SNCTA.

Another reason for the mobilization: "Controlling the presence of controllers," according to the DGAC. The Bureau of Investigations and Analysis (BEA) has, in fact, recommended in 2023 the implementation of biometric time clocks to control the presence of air traffic controllers at their workplace, after a near collision at Bordeaux-Merignac airport between an Airbus and a tourist plane in 2022.

The cause was that the air traffic controllers, who were too few in number in the airport control tower and busy with other tasks, had momentarily forgotten the presence of the small aircraft. For the BEA, this incident is directly linked to the practice of clearance: controllers who, faced with lower-than-expected traffic, allow themselves undeclared absences.