The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGAC) has asked airlines to cancel, Thursday, June 29, all their flights departing from or arriving at the airports of Beauvais, Brest and Carcassonne due to a strike by controllers. aerial.
On Wednesday, the DGAC had called for the elimination of half of the flights at Beauvais (Oise) airport alone for Thursday, but it extended these measures “taking into account the monitoring of the movement observed in the air navigation organizations of Beauvais, Brest and Carcassonne”, she said in a statement. The administration justified the measure by “a national strike notice (…) filed by a trade union representative of air traffic controllers”.
The said union, the USAC-CGT, is protesting against the social protocol being negotiated with the DGAC, which, according to it, “confirms a desire to upset the organization of the work of civil aviation personnel, while recording degradations of the service provided”. This is a text “as is, unacceptable”said the USAC-CGT in a press release.
This union had already been at the forefront of the protest movement against the pension reform, which had caused cascading flight cancellations and delays between March and May.
“Challenging the right to strike”
The USAC-CGT also denounced the vote on June 15 in the Senate of a bill aimed at better organizing air traffic in the event of a strike. It’s about a “challenging the right to strike” and warned that “the promulgation of this law would constitute an extraordinary setback of this constitutional right”according to the organization.
Currently, unions in air traffic control must file any strike notice five days before a movement, but strikers do not have to declare their individual participation, unlike other employees in the sector. They will have to do so from now on under this bill. This reform must now be examined by the National Assembly.
The Minister Delegate for Transport, Clément Beaune, said he was in favor of such a change in the law after a surprise work stoppage on February 11 by air traffic controllers, in the absence of a strike call, which had led the DGAC to have one out of two flights at Paris-Orly canceled in disaster.
Strikes by French air traffic controllers are a recurring cause of anger for foreign airlines, which are often forced to bypass the country when the operation of CRNAs is affected. Ryanair launched a petition on this subject, which had gathered 1.24 million signatures on Thursday.
Tenth French airport for its traffic, Beauvais, 80 kilometers north of Paris, according to the Union of French Airports (UAF), welcomed 4.6 million travelers in 2022, exceeding its 2019 level by 15.8%. , thanks to the dynamism of low cost, including Ryanair, which bases two aircraft there. Brest-Bretagne is, meanwhile, the 18e national airport with 801,000 passengers in 2022, down sharply (-35.1%) compared to the pre-health crisis, while Carcassonne welcomed 280,000 travelers last year, which places it in 26e UAF ranking position.