Two days of French ATC strikes ‘cost aviation industry €120m’

Two days of strikes by French air traffic controllers last week led to costs of €120 million to the European aviation sector.

 

The total comprised of €47 million in delay costs and an estimated €73 million in cancellation costs, Eurocontrol disclosed.

 

The body responsible for air traffic control in Europe noted how air traffic control (ATC) strikes in one busy country can have a “disproportionately large” impact on the European network as a whole.

 

The industrial action on July 3-4 by French air traffic controllers affected more than one million passengers with around 200,000 unable to fly as they had intended as a result of cancellations.

 

An average of 3,713 flights were delayed on each strike day, 10.7% of the total.

 

Airlines were forced into an average of 1,422 cancellations on each strike day, 4.7% of all scheduled flights. 

 

Flights that did operate are subject to average delays to arrival of 24 minutes - 10 minutes more than on a normal day.

 

The two-day walkout had major impacts not only on flights arriving in, or departing from, France - where arrival punctuality dropped from 73% to 50% - but also in neighbouring countries, most notably Spain, the UK and Italy.

 

A report by Eurocontrol said: “Most of these affected flights were not flying to France directly but were overflying France en-route to another country. 

 

“For Spain this amounted to 94% of its affected flights (918 out of 978), whereas for the other states, between 65% and 86% of their impacted flights were overflights rather than flights to France.”

 

The strike caused a total of 354,000 minutes of direct air traffic flow management (ATFM) delays across the network, Eurocontrol noted.

 

It raised the average ATFM delay of a delayed flight to 41 minutes, with 6% of delayed flights (425 in total) delayed by more than two hours.

 

Ryanair was identified as the airline group most affected with a daily average of 718 flights with an ATFM delay attributed to industrial action, followed by easyJet (407) and Air France (275). 

 

The highest share of flights delayed by the strikes was Volotea on 34%, followed by Air France (33%), easyJet (25%), Ryanair (21%) and Vueling (20%). 

 

The average delay per delayed flight for Europe’s ten busiest airlines or airline groups due to the strikes was 22 minutes.

 

The worst affected airports were Palma, Barcelona, Paris Charles de Gaulle, Madrid, Malaga, Marseille, Paris Orly, Lisbon, Alicante and Lyon. 

 

Eurocontrol said: “Although France does have minimum service provisions that prevent the complete closure of its ATC operations, these do not protect overflights. 

 

"Minimum service regulations across Europe that protect overflights - such as are he case in, for example, Italy and Spain - would better protect the flying public from the disruptions described in this paper.”

 

The dispute also negatively impacted the environment, with an average additional 18,000 tons of fuel burnt and more than 60,000 excess tons of CO₂ emissions.