In the middle of the holiday season there is chaos not only at German airports: Many flights were canceled at the weekend due to a cabin crew strike at the low-cost airlines Easyjet and Ryanair in Spain.
If you want to fly to Spain with a low-cost airline like Easyjet or Ryanair, you have to be flexible. On Saturday alone, 15 Easyjet and Ryanair flights to and from Madrid had to be canceled due to a strike by Spanish cabin crew, and another 175 were delayed. At Easyjet alone, 450 flight attendants were called to go on strike over the weekend, with further work stoppages to follow from July 15 to 18 and July 29 to 31.
At Ryanair, the strike began on June 24th. The Spanish union USO called for further four-day walkouts from July 12, 18 and 25 at all ten Spanish airports that belong to the Irish low-cost airline’s network.
Unions are demanding better working conditions for Ryanair’s 1,900 Spanish cabin crew members. They demand the same working conditions for Easyjet’s Spanish cabin crew as for British airline employees in other EU countries. For the employees of Easyjet in Germany, for example, a wage increase of eight percent and one-off payments were agreed on Wednesday.
At Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, the fire brigade went on strike on Thursday, which was also joined by other employees of the state operator Aéroports de Paris (ADP) and subcontractors. Several runways had to be closed as a precaution. According to an ADP spokesman, 150 of the 1,300 flights were canceled on Saturday alone. Paris Orly Airport was therefore not affected by the strike. After a standstill period from Sunday, the fire brigade threatened further work stoppages for the coming weekend – and thus at the beginning of the summer holidays.
USA: 600 flights canceled
In the USA, too, there was chaos in air traffic at the weekend. On Saturday alone, more than 600 domestic and international flights were canceled by the afternoon (local time) due to staff shortages, according to the website flightaware.com, which specializes in flight connections. More than 3,300 other flights were delayed.
The US celebrates its Independence Day this Monday and many people took advantage of the long weekend to travel. Since the flight chaos was to be expected due to the personnel problems in the aviation industry, which was badly hit by the corona pandemic, many travelers gave up flights from the outset. According to the AAA, a record 42 million US citizens are likely to drive at least 50 miles (80 kilometers) by car.
The Canadian airlines WestJet and Air Canada also announced that they would significantly reduce the number of their flights over the summer due to a lack of staff. Hundreds of flights are affected by this.
