France Joins Europe Travel Industry Strikes

It seems that France's air traffic controllers are the latest European travel industry group to go on strike, joining the ranks of Greece's customs officals, Lufthansa's pilots and British Airways' cabin crews. (It should be noted, of course, that the BA workers have not yet announced strike dates, and that Lufthansa's strike lasted all of a day before it was postponed.)

The New York Times reports that France’s civil aviation authority ordered airlines to cancel 25 percent of their flights at Charles de Gaulle Airport, the main international airport serving Paris, and 50 percent of flights at Orly, which mainly serves domestic and European destinations. Some smaller provincial French airports were closed altogether.

Bloomberg reports that French controllers want to block European Union plans to create what’s known as a “Single European Sky” by merging some control centers and closing others. In the first stage of the agreement, France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland are scheduled to sign a treaty later this year.