Impact of strikes on European Aviation

Between 1 March and 9 April, there were 34 days with industrial action – impacting millions of passengers
Impact of strikes on European Aviation

This is the first in a new series of papers “EUROCONTROL Aviation Trends” which will analyse key topics in detail, with a view to promoting and informing debate.

This paper looks at the impact of the extensive strikes experienced by aviation so far this year, in particular in France. During the period from 1 March to 9 April, there were 34 days with industrial action impacting air transport in Europe. These potentially impacted 237,000 flights (30% of all European flights on those days). More than 10 million passengers were affected and, on a typical strike day, approximately 64,000 passengers were unable to fly as they intended (as a result of cancellations).

While France was particularly affected, neighbouring countries also suffered significant delays and cancellations, even for flights that were planned to overfly France rather than take-off or land there. Reactionary or knock-on delays also affected subsequent flights and punctuality for the Network as a whole dropped from 80% to 71%. Each strike day saw an additional 1,200 tonnes of CO2 emissions as aircraft had to fly an extra 96,000 kilometres.

France does have minimum service provisions, preventing the complete closure of its ATC operations. However, these do not protect overflights (as is the case in, for example, Italy and Spain).

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Impact of strikes on European Aviation