IAG and Ryanair bosses slam ‘continuous’ French strikes as ‘impossible’ for airlines
Luis Gallego and Eddie Wilson say planes should still fly over France when air traffic controllers strike
The head of British Airways owner International Airlines Group and the chief executive of rival Ryanair have both hit out at the progress of attempts to end a long-running dispute with air traffic controllers across Europe, particularly those in France.
Rules that prevent airlines from flying over France when its air controllers are on strike, even to reach other destinations, have been a source of frustration for airlines for years.
Luis Gallego, IAG’s chief executive, said that “the strikes of the French continuously” are “impossible” for airlines.
“I am not happy [with progress of talks] to be honest, it is something we are pushing,” he told the World Aviation Festival in Lisbon on Wednesday.
“We want protection in France, the protection to fly over France if there is a strike there, but it is going to take more time,” he said.
Airlines have been particularly frustrated by so-called flyover rules. The issue has often led to flights between the UK and Europe being cancelled because of strikes in France.
A planned strike this week by France’s main air traffic controller union, SNCTA, was postponed at the last minute, leading to confusion among airlines that had been prepared to cancel flights. Ryanair forecast the strike would have led to 600 cancelled flights a day — even though most were not destined for France.
The no-frills airline claims that France is responsible for the most cancelled flights across Europe.
“If you’re a French air traffic controller and you want to go on strike, if you want to change the government’s view of things, right, that’s fine [ … ] but it shouldn’t affect things that are not within your territory,” said Eddie Wilson, Ryanair’s chief executive.
“It's the equivalent of French farmers running sheep down Whitehall to complain about the price of French lamb,” he told the Financial Times, adding that Italy, Greece, Spain and Germany all allow overflying during air traffic control strikes.
EU officials warned this summer that delays could be at their worst ever, in part because of strikes. Airspace is sovereign. Efforts to set up the Single European Sky — akin to a single market across the bloc for airspace — is still not a reality, despite it first being proposed in 2004. Ministers from the EU’s 27 member states only agreed their initial position on an updated proposal in June.
Willie Walsh, who heads industry lobby group Iata, told the same event in Lisbon that “the reality of being able to overfly France, that should be in place, it’s disgraceful that we’re at this stage. Quite honestly there’s no excuse for it”.
He said the air traffic situation in Europe was “terrible and continues to be the cause of enormous frustration”.
The majority of delays are caused by staffing shortages at air traffic control centres, something he said was “just unacceptable”.
“Despite their performance they still get paid the same amount of money, if they incur additional costs they just add them to the bill [paid by airlines],” he added. “We suffer as an industry, we pay the bill when [air traffic control] doesn’t deliver.”