May 1 strike: Roissy, Orly, Bordeaux, Marseille… 25 to 33% of flights will be canceled at most French airports

Cloudy sky for May 1st. The DGAC has asked airlines to reduce their flight schedule for Monday May 1, 2023 by 33% at Paris-Orly, Marseille-Provence, Lyon, Bordeaux, Nantes, Toulouse airports and by 25% at airports from Paris-CDG, Nice and Beauvais. “Despite these preventive measures, disruptions and delays are nevertheless to be expected,” specifies the DGAC.

The air traffic controllers’ union filed a strike notice for May 1 as part of the movement against the pension reform enacted in mid-April, without the consequences for traffic being known immediately.

The Union Syndicale de l’Aviation Civile-CGT (USAC-CGT) “continues to be part of the mobilization decided by all the union confederations” on Labor Day, she writes in a letter announcing this notice to the director general of civil aviation. This notice concerns “the day of May 1, 2023″ and “the overnight stays upstream and downstream for agents working in staggered hours, completed the USAC-CGT in this missive consulted Wednesday on its website.

10 million passengers affected by the strike between March and the beginning of April

The USAC-CGT is at the forefront of the mobilization of air traffic controllers against the pension reform, which resulted in 34 days of strike action in the first quarter alone, according to the National Federation of Aviation and its Trades ( Fnam), spokesperson for airlines in France. Another union, the SNCTA, which claims to be in the majority among air traffic controllers, does not, however, call for a strike against this very unpopular reform and promulgated on April 15 by President Emmanuel Macron.

During previous days of social movement, the administration had asked companies to give up part of their flight program departing from or arriving at certain French airports, including Orly, the country’s second platform. According to Fnam, some 3,500 flights were canceled in the first quarter, including 500 “hot”, without the passengers being able to be warned in advance, synonymous with difficult situations in the terminals.

For its part, the European air traffic monitoring body, Eurocontrol, estimated that 10 million passengers were affected by the strike between March and early April.

Indeed, the work stoppages of controllers affect, in addition to French airports, the air navigation en route centers (CRNA) which manage the trajectories of aircraft crossing French airspace to connect two third countries. These strikes therefore have cascading effects on all air transport on the Old Continent.