Today will be marked as yet another day in French labour history. French air traffic controllers are on strike until 5am tomorrow morning. There is also industrial action at Air France and SNCF and some Eurostar services have been cancelled. The nationwide protest is in response to President Macron's proposed reforms and stoppages are scheduled for the next couple of months.
Disruption of a different kind has been happening on the other side of the world.
No company ever wants to release a statement similar to that which Expedia had to this week when it revealed that its Orbitz system had suffered data breaches and that approximately 880,000 people may be affected.
Personal data including name, address, payment card information, date of birth, phone number, email address and gender were apparently hacked at some time during the last quarter of 2017.
Those vulnerable had used a payment card on Orbitz or had had booked on one of its partners' sites sometime during 2016 or 2017. This means people who have used Amextravel.com, a white-labelled consumer travel agent site powered by Orbitz for American Express, are also potential victims. American Express GBT customers are not affected.
These may be two different disruptions in two different parts of the world but both are activities in which people are unwillingly being adversely affected although they may be willingly participating in the business travel.
Strikes are nothing unusual and, although relatively rare, travel companies have been hit by cyber attacks before. That combined with a focus on high profile events such as tsunamis and bombs in airports makes us think that risk is unusual.
In the Orbitz case the culprit has been identified as legacy systems. The phrase "legacy systems" suggests that the risk can be removed by investment or time. Strikes are voluntary and can be stopped by a change in behaviour.
These all suggest that there is a logical explanation and that these episodes are rare but not unheard of so that appropriate response processes and solutions can be put in place.
How do travel managers mitigate these risks?
Increasingly, travel managers are urged to have a risk management policy in place. Employing specialists to advise on danger and implementing response strategies may be best practice but can they ever be sufficient?
Disruption may be regular but its causes and forms can evolve very quickly and be very irregular.
There are many ways in which business travel can be potentially vulnerable, whether it's a spectacular, once-in-a-lifetime event or something as everyday as a road closure.
Inevitably, there is always a focus on the latest disruption and companies often make a disproportionate response to the latest incident, whether that is a terrorist bomb, an outbreak of Ebola or indeed a data breach or strike.
The savvy manager, in conjunction with specialist partners, need to minimise exposure to risk and put systems in place to minimise disruption for travellers but they need to recognise that they should focus on foreseeable and preventable (or at least manageable) risks.