Despite the lifting of the mobilization, the disruptions remain. This Wednesday morning, the main union representing air traffic controllers, the SNCTA, announced the lifting of its strike notice filed for Thursday April 25. A decision taken following a “nightly conciliation from 6 p.m. to 8:30 a.m.”, which made it possible to reach an agreement at the last minute, he specifies on his website. “Given the extremely short deadline linked to this last minute conciliation, each controller can cancel their prior declaration, despite the deadline of “6 p.m. the day before” having passed,” adds the organization.
However, the companies, warned at the last moment, were unable to avoid massive flight cancellations at many airports, we learned on Wednesday. Three quarters of flights at Paris-Orly will be canceled, as will 55% at Roissy-Charles-De-Gaulle, 65% at Marseille-Provence and 45% at other mainland airports, including Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nice and Lyon. , indicates the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGAC) to Le Figaro. Figures slightly lower than those cited the evening before by AFP, which reported 75% of flights canceled at Paris-Orly, 65% at Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle, 65% in Marseille, 60% at Toulouse and 70% in Nice. “We have succeeded in reducing the reduction rate,” welcomes the DGAC.
It was therefore a long night for the various stakeholders, in order to avoid a strike which promised to be particularly intense. The evening before, the DGAC indicated to Le Figaro that “negotiations are still underway and a communication will be made later”. Shortly before, another minority union, Unsa UTCAC, also indicated that it was lifting its strike notice, “in order to give one last chance to the protocol negotiations started more than a year ago, and the pace of which must be significantly accelerated “.
The Minister of Transport, Patrice Vergriete, “welcomes the agreement with the SNCTA” which “concludes fifteen months of negotiation”. In a press release published this Tuesday, the executive welcomes the reform of air navigation services, which will notably make it possible to “achieve a reduction of one million minutes of delay by 2027”. Concerning the modernization measures planned in the reform, they will be “financed through air navigation fees invoiced to airlines”. “The state budget and the taxpayer will not be solicited,” assures the minister’s office.
The fact remains that the flight cancellation figures, which are reaching peaks despite the cancellation of the strike, remain serious consequences for the sector: “it will have a huge impact”, worried the president of the National Federation of aviation and its professions (Fnam), Pascal de Izaguirre, Tuesday. “For airlines, for airports, several tens of millions of euros are at stake, every day,” underlined the boss of the ADP group, Augustin de Romanet, on Wednesday morning.
On Wednesday, the DGAC also confirmed that the SNCTA had finally committed “not to call a strike” on May 9, 10 and 11. The union had in fact filed another strike notice on Tuesday covering the Ascension Bridge.
