Air traffic is expected to be disrupted on Friday. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGAC) asked airlines to give up 40% of their flight schedule on Friday at Paris-Orly, the second French airport, due to an inter-professional strike relayed by a union of controllers aerial. Carriers have also been called upon to reduce their flight schedule in Marseille-Provence by 20% and by 15% in Beauvais, the airline said in a press release on Monday. DGACwarning that the activity of en-route air navigation centers, managing aircraft circulating in French skies, would also be affected.
“Despite these preventive measures, disruptions and delays are nevertheless to be expected”, underlined the DGAC, inviting “passengers who can to postpone their trip and to contact their airline to find out the status of their flight.
In a context of “Olympic truce”
The union that called for a strike is the USAC-CGT, a minority among air traffic controllers but already at the forefront in the spring in the mobilization against pension reform. Among the points defended by the USAC-CGT is the fact that “DGAC agents are starting to be impacted by the reform”. The organization also pointed out “increasing inequalities at the DGAC, particularly in terms of salaries” and criticized “the dynamiting of the public aviation service”.
This notice comes a month after the first air traffic controllers union, the SNCTA, committed to respecting an “Olympic truce”, that is to say not to strike between now and the end of the Olympic Games. and Paralympics planned in France during the summer of 2024.
According to the Minister of Transport Clément Beaune, this agreement also involves the second union in terms of number of votes in the professional elections of air traffic controllers, the UNSA-ICNA. But not the USAC-CGT, the third union. “At a time when some are satisfied with a meager unequal revaluation of DGAC agents (or even non-existent for some) to the point of signing a moratorium on social conflicts (which only involves those who signed it), the USAC-CGT is, on the contrary, responsible for mobilizing agents on these major issues,” he argued in a leaflet calling for a strike on Friday.
Ulcerated companies
Numerous days of strike by French air traffic controllers at the start of the year, during the conflict over pensions, led the DGAC to ask airlines to preventively cancel part of their flights. These strikes had angered the companies which serve France or pass through its airspace, the most flown over in Europe due to its central geographical position.
These developments come at a time when a bill adopted in June in the Senate provides for the obligation for air traffic controllers to declare themselves on strike 48 hours in advance, as is already the case at the RATP or the SNCF.