Damage toll on Palma airport due to French air traffic controllers strike.
Saturday, June 28th, 2014
Six flights were cancelled at Palma Airport on Wednesday due to the chaos caused by the French air traffic controllers strike. Car rental companies and their customers also suffered from the knock on effects of the cancellations at Palma airport.
Wednesday the 25th was the worse day of the strike where a total of 54 flights between Spain and France, six of them linked with Palma airport, were cancelled.
This represents 20.7% of the 261 scheduled flights for that day. According to Aena these 54 cancelled flights were equally arrivals and departures, 27 apiece.
The highest number of cancellations occurred in the Barcelona-El Prat airport, where 16 flights were cancelled followed by Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas airport with 7 and Palma de Mallorca and Sevilla with 6 cancelled flights each.
On the Tuesday the 24th of June, 56 flights between Spain and France were cancelled from a total of 246 scheduled.
French air traffic  controllers strike comes to an end
The strike by French air traffic controllers, which also caused extensive disruption to UK and Irish flights, ended after the Wednesday of trouble .
The strike had been planned to remain in place until the weekend.
AFP news agency reported that the industrial action against budget cuts which began on Tuesday, had been called off confirmed unions.
‘Severely disrupted’
When Belgian air traffic controllers announced they would join the strike on Wednesday afternoon, the situation started to degenerate fast.
That action caused a two-hour closure in Belgium’s air space
Relief for passengers
Normality started to return to the schedules of the airlines once the announcement about the end of the strike got out.
Ryanair said all its scheduled flights on Thursday would now operate as normal. They alleged the strike had caused the cancellation of 15% of its flights on Wednesday.
They mentioned that all their affected customers had been contacted by email and SMS.
About 20% of Easyjet’s flights were cancelled on Wednesday in and out of France.
Government recognized reasons
The strike had been called off after the government recognized the “importance of investment in the sector”, according to the Unsa-ICNA union, which launched the protest.
Passengers due to fly in or close by the French airspace were still urged to check the status of their flights with their airlines as disruptions couldn’t be totally ruled out.
Monarch Airlines continued to try to minimize disruption for their customers as much as possible and said it had not cancelled any flights during the strike period.
Flybe also stated that it had not cancelled any flights on Wednesday.
By Brendan Bierley
