'Smashed' travel: European airlines worry about a summer full of strikes

Storm warning at European airports this summer. Airlines warned on Tuesday that strikes could "ruin" the travel of millions of passengers this summer in Europe. "Millions of Europeans wishing to travel this summer risk seeing their plans shattered by strikes," warned the acting director general of the association Airlines for Europe (A4E), Laurent Donceel in a statement. "We respect the right to strike, but the cascading effects of flight disruptions between member states are unbearable," he added.

The world's leading airline association, IATA, also said in a statement on Tuesday that "social disruption, particularly in France, is a source of concern." The organization is all the more worried as it envisages a "strong" peak of activity this summer in Europe, with bookings for the May-September period 40% higher than those of 2022, already a year of frank post-pandemic recovery.

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Airlines have already suffered greatly from the strike of French air traffic controllers, which peaked in mid-March. Some air traffic controllers participated in the challenge to the pension reform in France, which led to the cancellation of part of the movements to or from airports, but also to the reduction of the number of flights that can cross the country's airspace. In mid-April, the air traffic watchdog Eurocontrol estimated that 30% of flights in Europe, or "more than 10 million" passengers, had been affected since early March by the strike of French air traffic controllers.

Companies call on Brussels to act

On Tuesday, nearly 965,000 people had signed a petition launched on March 20 by Ryanair, the first European airline for the number of passengers, to call on the European authorities to protect these overflights. A4E has once again called on the European Commission, as it did in March at the height of the strike of French air traffic controllers, to mitigate the effects of a possible social conflict. The association, which defends the interests of major carriers based on the Old Continent including Ryanair, easyJet, Air France, Lufthansa and British Airways, wants "mandatory arbitration before the air traffic controllers' unions threaten to launch a strike".

The organization also wants a "21-day notice" for these strikes and insists again on the "protection of overflights" of the country where the social movement is taking place, as well as a "right of recourse to air navigation service providers" to be compensated for the cost of disruptions, it explained.