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PARIS, June 19: Travellers across Europe suffered flight chaos on Wednesday caused by a strike led by French air traffic controllers protesting plans for a united European airspace.
Airlines cancelled most flights in and out of France because of protests against the European Union’s “single sky” plan to harmonise technical standards and create flight corridors that cut across the continent’s fading land borders.
Greek controllers joined in late in the morning and their Italian and Hungarian colleagues were due to follow suit, certain to cause more air traffic havoc in those countries in shorter versions of the day-long French walkout.
Hundreds of holidaymakers were left stranded overnight in airport lounges in Greece, where an air traffic official said there had been a 100 percent response to the strike call.
“Its terrible. I have been here for 12 hours,” said Werner Schmidt, stranded at Athens airport after 90 of a total 450 daily flights were cancelled.
British Airways, which relies heavily on French airspace for European connections, cancelled all but four of its 126 French flights, and 38 other services to Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg.
Proponents of the so-called “single sky” initiative, debated by European transport ministers on Monday, say having air zones based on the busiest routes will be more efficient and allow ATC services to adapt safely to expected traffic growth.
Air traffic control (ATC) unions say they fear the EU plan could force them to compete for contracts and lead to privatisation of their services.
“We are defending a system that’s not failed in forty years,” said Christian Chardon, national secretary of the ATC wing of France’s CFDT union.
HIGH COSTS: The strike added to the worries of European airlines facing higher insurance and security costs and lower ticket revenues after the September 11 hijacked airliner attacks.
Air France shares dropped 2.3 percent by 1400 GMT, while BA’s shares were 3.4 percent lower.
French unions were due to strike for 16 hours compared to five hours in Greece, two hours in Hungary and one in Italy.
“It is downright absurd that...air traffic controllers call a strike for today to protest against open European skies and come out in favour of maintaining fragmented structures,” Chief Executive Juergen Weber told the Lufthansa annual shareholder meeting in Cologne.
Air France, the 56 percent state-owned national carrier, did not comment on the motivation for the strike.
At least 90 percent of its short and medium-haul flights did not take off, although most long-range flights went ahead.
“People had largely been warned yesterday that their flights would be cancelled, so most haven’t made pointless journeys to airports,” said a spokeswoman for Paris airport operator ADP.
Of 660 flights at Paris’s Orly airport on Wednesday, only 77 were functioning while at Roissy airport, between 200 and 250 out of 1,500 flights were maintained, the DGAC said.—Reuters
