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Update: French airport strike primarily affects EasyJet and Air France
The cancellations mostly concern Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport – where around a quarter of flights will not run this morning – but also Marseille, Nice and Lyon
Today’s airport worker strikes will see around 100 flights cancelled in total at Paris-Charles de Gaulle, with Air France and EasyJet services the most severely affected. Other airports around France are also affected.
Read more: Alert: Strike at French airports, several flights cancelled
Air France has cancelled 85 – principally medium haul – flights from Paris-Charles de Gaulle between 07:00 and 14:00 today (June 9), as two runways are temporarily closed.
The disruption has already affected services to Nice, Rome, Madrid, Porto and Geneva.
EasyJet has cancelled 10 flights between Charles de Gaulle and London-Gatwick, Luton and Milan-Malpensa.
Other airlines to have announced cancellations from or to the airport include Brussels Airlines, ITA Airways, Vueling, Lufthansa, British Airways, Icelandair, Aer Lingus and Turkish Airlines.
The strike began yesterday (June 8), with airport unions calling for a €300 pay rise for workers, “without conditions and for everyone”, to help them cope with rising inflation.
The striking staff included security agents, causing delays for passengers trying to get through to their departure gates. However, this did not result in cancellations yesterday.
Today’s cancellations come as the result of a request from the Direction Générale de l’Aviation Civile, which has asked airlines to cut their flight schedules down to reduce strike-related delays.
Paris Aéroport, which manages both Charles de Gaulle and Orly, has stated that solutions “will be found so that travellers can be put onto another flight.”
Air France has encouraged passengers whose flights are running to check in online to avoid queues at the airport.
The airline’s long-haul flights are largely unaffected by today’s disruption, with only seven – including services to New York and Los Angeles – being delayed. It has said that passengers affected by the disruption will be contacted directly.
So far, Paris-Orly has not announced any cancellations, but Marseille-Provence, Nice-Provence and Lyon-Saint Exupéry have reported up to three each.
‘Our work is not fairly paid’
In calling the strike, unions stated that “despite the resumption of [air] traffic and the profits made, our work is not fairly paid. Everything is going up apart from our salaries.”
The FO-Feets union commented yesterday that the aviation sector “lost 15,000 jobs in two years. [Remaining] employees are now under pressure; they are not numerous enough to manage the flow of passengers.
“For example, in Aéroports de Paris, the management got rid of 1,150 because of the Covis crisis and is now looking for 600 to resolve the lack of airport staff.”
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