Ryanair speaks out as French ATC strike for 40th time in 6 years

Last week we reported on the creation of the A4E (Airlines for Europe) alliance by IAG (British Airways & Iberia), Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, easyJet and Ryanair, and quoted Ryanair’s CEO, Michael O’Leary, who specifically wanted to target air traffic control (ATC) unions – “we want to eliminate air traffic control strikes that affect thousands of passengers.” O’Leary wants to see rules drawn up to enforce arbitration before strike action.
Tuesday’s strike by French ATCs, their 40th since 2009, has unsurprisingly brought a further strong reaction from Ryanair who have called on the French Government and European Commission “to take immediate action to prevent thousands of European consumers from having their travel plans disrupted or holidays cancelled by tiny groups of Air Traffic Control (ATC) unions going on strike tonight (Monday).” Ryanair is responsible for launching Keep Europe’s Skies Open, which is an online petition allowing European consumers the opportunity to join their action to protect Europe from repeated disruption by ATC unions. Once the petition achieves one million signatures Ryanair intends take it to the EU in Brussels and press for the Commission and the EU Parliament to take action.
The current strike is set to last from 1600hrs GMT Monday 25th to 0500hrs GMT Wednesday 27th and will affect thousands of passengers and flights which would have been using the nine principal French airports of Charles De Gaulle, Orly, Beauvais–Tille, Lyon–Saint-Exupery, Nice Cote d’Azur, Marseille Provence, Bordeaux–Merignac, Toulouse Blagnac and Nantes Atlantique. However, it will also affect those flights that would have ordinarily been using French airspace and which will now have to reroute, increasing flight costs while also creating ongoing delays elsewhere.
Today’s strike by the French ATCs is part of a French public service strike which also involves taxi drivers, public sector workers and public transport. In particular, French ATC unions are protesting at the loss of some 1,000 jobs over the last ten years and they also want to be exempted from proposed changes to how salaries are calculated. Taxi drivers are protesting against the company behind the Uber app and are being joined by a delegation of drivers from Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom, while 5.6 million civil servants have been encouraged to protest against the an 8% drop in the true value of their wages and a loss of 150,000 jobs since 2007.