More Europe aviation staff strike to prevent cost cuts

Dubai: Aviation industry strikes are plaguing Europe as disgruntled employees strive to strong-arm their way out of cost cuts.

The latest in the series of troubles affecting British Airways and Lufthansa is France, where air traffic controllers began a four-day strike on Tuesday amid job loss fears.

The country's civil aviation authority has told airlines to cut back flight schedules by half at Orly airport and by 25 per cent at Charles de Gaulle, the destination of local carriers Etihad and Emirates.

Etihad said its flights to Charles de Gaulle are on schedule. "We've not been affected. All flights have landed and taken off on schedule," a spokesman told Gulf News, adding that he expects service to continue uninterrupted. The airline flies 10 flights per week to Paris.

Emirates flies its superjumbo A380 on the Dubai-Paris route and also the Boeing 777-300. It was unavailable to comment on flight status immediately.

Single European sky

Controllers want to block European Union plans to create what's known as a "single European sky" by merging control centres and eliminating surplus ones. Six European countries are to sign a treaty later this year.

Meanwhile, Lufthansa said on Tuesday that it had negotiated a suspension of the pilot strike that began on Monday.

Ending two days earlier, the strike induced a special flight schedule, which is still in place. The normal schedule will gradually return by Friday, the airline said in a statement.

"The parties agreed to return to the negotiating table in order to resolve the conflict," the airline said. Pilots were angered by being shifted to partner airlines, which meant a pay cut.

Disappointing

Cabin crew voted in favour of a strike, British Airways yesterday said while announcing the result of a ballot taken by about 12,000 staff.

"The outcome of the ballot is very disappointing and brings a renewed threat of industrial action, which is completely unjustified," the airline said in a statement.

Unite, the trade union, has not announced the dates for the strike yet but said it would not be over the Easter period. The High Court earlier ruled in favour of the airline, saying it was within its right to make changes to salary packages.

BA staff are concerned about salary cuts. The airline, however, said that changes would not affect existing cabin crew who are still up for a salary increase of 2-7 per cent.