Controller strike in France affects dozens of flights in Portugal

The strike by air traffic controllers in France led this Thursday to the cancellation of almost 90 flights from various airlines at Lisbon, Porto and Faro airports, according to data available on the respective websites.

At Lisbon airport, 23 flights which were scheduled to arrive today and which originated in several French cities are marked as “cancelled”, in addition to a further 25 flights which were due to depart from the Portuguese capital to France.

At Francisco Sá Carneiro Airport, in Porto, 15 flight arrivals from France and 14 departures to that country were cancelled.

As for Faro airport, it records a dozen canceled flights: Five originating in French cities and many others that were supposed to depart for France.

At issue are flights operated by several airlines, namely Ryanair, Transavia, Volotea, Vueling, Air France, TAP and EasyJet.

Thousands of flights were canceled at French airports today and hundreds of planes were grounded due to the air traffic controllers’ strike.

According to the French news agency AFP, the cancellations mainly affected short and medium-haul flights.

Around 2,300 flights are scheduled to depart or arrive at French airports today, compared to the almost 5,200 registered on Wednesday, according to the panel of the Directorate-General for Civil Aviation (DGAC) consulted by AFP.

In Europe, more than 2,000 flights have been canceled and 1,000 are at risk of having to be diverted to avoid French airspace, according to airline association Airlines for Europe.

In order to adapt traffic to available personnel, French civil aviation asked companies to cancel three out of every four flights departing or arriving at Paris-Orly, the second French airport; 55% in Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle, the first; 65% in Marseille-Provence (south) and 45% on all other platforms in metropolitan France.

Most long-haul connections, however, escaped cancellations, with the DGAC’s request only applying to planes that make “three or more movements” during the day.