Gwym Topham, The Guardian, September 5, 2014
A strike by air traffic controllers in Italy will lead to flights to and from the country being disrupted on Saturday.
The four-hour action will affect thousands of passengers flying between the UK and Italy, with Ryanair and EasyJet announcing that they are cancelling flights.
Ryanair will be cancelling 96 services in total, of which 8 are direct to the UK. They said more cancellations could be expected. EasyJet is cancelling around 60 services, mostly from Italy to other European destinations. British Airways said it was making contingency plans but is yet to cancel any services.
The Italian strike should not affect travellers as broadly as the recent French air traffic controllers' strikes, which covered a larger swathe of neighbouring airspace.
An EasyJet spokesperson said: "We are doing everything possible to minimise the impact to our customers and we are offering anyone flying to and from Italy during those times, the opportunity to transfer their flight free of charge to another day to avoid the strike." Ryanair has cancelled some flights between Italian destinations and Manchester, Liverpool and Stansted airports and warned that travellers on other services could face delays.
A Ryanair spokesperson said: "Ryanair regrets to advise passengers that 96 flights will be cancelled on Saturday, 6th September, due to a four-hour Italian ATC strike and further delays and cancellations are likely. We sincerely apologise to all passengers who have had their travel plans disrupted by these unjustified ATC strikes."The airline said customers flying to Italy should check the status of their flight online before going to the airport.
The strike action, brought by the air traffic control workers' union Licta, will run from 12:30pm to 4.30pm local time on Saturday 6 September.
This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk
This article was written by Gwyn Topham and Transport Correspondent from The Guardian and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.
