It will be better to avoid taking the plane on Thursday April 25, unless you want to endure hours of waiting in airports and even risk not leaving at all. The air traffic controllers’ strike promises to be particularly sustained. A black Thursday in perspective because all the air traffic controller organizations have called to stop work. Even the National Union of Air Traffic Controllers (SNCTA), ultra-majority with more than 60% of the votes among controllers, yet reluctant to strike, with only three notices filed in ten years, promises “a record mobilization”.
To deal with this, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGAC) has asked airlines operating in France to reduce, that is to say, cancel 75% of flights at Orly airport. and 65% to those of Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle and Marseille. The DGAC also asks them to cancel 60% of flights at Toulouse and Nice, and 50% for other airports. Airlines expected the worst. “We were warned of considerable reductions. A huge impact »complained in advance, Tuesday April 23, Pascal de Izaguirre, president of Corsair and the National Federation of Aviation and its Trades (FNAM).
For once, the number of cancellations should be in line with that of strikers. Indeed, since the start of the year, air traffic controllers have been required, like other categories of air transport personnel, to declare a strike forty-eight hours before the start of the conflict.
The closure of a quarter of the control towers
The trade union organizations intend to protest against the consequences of the reform of air navigation services launched by the DGAC fifteen months ago. The challenge of restructuring the French sky is important. The objective is to absorb the strong growth in air traffic which is expected to increase by “10% to 20% by 2030”, explains the SNCTA. To do this, the DGAC wants to rationalize the network of air navigation services by closing between 2028 and 2035 a quarter of the control towers currently in service and wants to halve the number of approach control centers. These centers which manage planes approaching an airport would go from 30 to 16, according to the SNCTA.
Faced with this reform, the unions are moving forward somewhat in a dispersed manner. The SNCTA fears “a social impact” on the air traffic controllers. While the question of staffing has already been resolved by negotiation in 2022, it is mobilizing on that of remuneration. The union is demanding access to the highest administrative index levels for switchers at the end of their careers. He also calls for an increase in salaries of 5.06% per year for the next three years, while pointing out that, in other European countries, air traffic controllers are paid “two to three times more than in France”, where the average salary of a switchman is around 5,000 euros.
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