A strike by French air traffic controllers has led to widespread flight cancellations and travel disruption across Europe, affecting tens of thousands of passengers at the height of the summer travel season, BBC reports.
Ryanair, Europe’s largest low-cost airline, announced it was forced to cancel more than 170 flights, disrupting travel plans for over 30,000 passengers on Thursday and Friday. The airline said the cancellations impacted not only flights to and from France, but also those passing through French airspace en route to destinations such as the UK, Ireland, Spain, and Greece.
The two-day strike was organized by the UNSA-ICNA union, which represents French air traffic controllers. The union cited staffing shortages, management issues, and concerns over a planned clock-in system as reasons for the industrial action. Negotiations with France’s civil aviation authority, DGAC, earlier in the week failed to resolve the dispute.
As a result, the DGAC instructed airlines to reduce flight schedules at several French airports. On Thursday, about 25% of flights were cancelled at major Paris airports, while half of flights were grounded at Nice airport. Additional disruptions were expected Friday, with up to 40% of flights affected at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle, Orly, and Beauvais airports.
French Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot condemned the strike, calling both the unions’ demands and the timing of the action “unacceptable,” especially during a peak period for holiday travel.
Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary criticized the strike’s impact on travelers, accusing air traffic controllers of “holding European families to ransom.” He called on European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to take “urgent action” to protect flights over French airspace during domestic strikes and to enforce minimum service levels across the EU during such disruptions.
Other carriers have also been affected. EasyJet expressed “deep disappointment” and urged French authorities and unions to reach a resolution swiftly.
Airlines for Europe (A4E), the continent’s leading airline industry group, described the strike as “intolerable” and warned it would cause severe travel disruptions at a critical point in the summer season.
Ryanair noted that, despite recent challenges—including the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, which caused over 800 cancellations in June—it still operated more than 109,000 flights last month. The airline emphasized that fewer than 1% of its total flights were affected by the current strike.
