Orly Airport in Paris has been thrown into chaos today (11 February), while delays are occurring at Charles de Gaulle as air traffic controllers strike.
There is severe disruption at Orly ” the southerly of Paris” two main airports - with one out of two flights cancelled today. ”The air traffic control (ATC) strike means that 50% of flights from Orly have been cancelled,” an Orly spokeswoman told ABTN.
”As for other services, there are at least two hour delays.”
And the walkout could last all week as the ATC unions have warned of further potential disruption until Friday. ”We hope this can be resolved but there is no calendar of meetings planned ” although the door is open,” added the spokeswoman.
The dispute centres on a complicated moving procedure that will eventually see controllers from both CDG and Orly move into one centre, but which will apparently entail an interim shift to Roissy.
”Management wants to transfer the approach [staff] Orly to Charles de Gaulle ” this is useless,” secretary general Olivier Joffrin of French air traffic control union, UFAC, told ABTN.
”We support regrouping all the approach centres of Orly and Charles de Gaulle into one centre [Athis-Mons] but management is looking to transfer controllers to Roissy ” this will take time and displaces people for nothing. This is not just asking people to move offices ” it”s about changing the working environment.”
Air France says it has cancelled some short-haul services from Orly and is warning of ”adjustments” from today until 15 February. Long-haul services are unaffected from both CDG and Orly, although flights to Corsica are subject to delay.
The strike comes as unwelcome news for easyJet which recently announced it was to base three new Airbus A319 aircraft at CDG, although most of the disruption is occurring at Orly.
The low-cost carrier has been forced to cancel ten services to and from Orly today and has offered to re-route passengers or provide a full refund.