Tuesday promises to be a challenging travel day for airline passengers in much of Europe. In France, The Associated Press writes “disgruntled would-be passengers complained about hundreds of canceled flights and long airport waits as air traffic controllers began a four-day strike across France on Tuesday. France’s civil aviation agency ordered airlines to cut back half of the flights in and out of Paris’ Orly airport and one in four at Charles de Gaulle amid staffing shortages caused by the walkout.”

Air France says it is attempting to keep its long-distance flights flying and that only domestic French routes would be hampered by the strike. Elsewhere, AP notes “several airports in smaller French cities were shut altogether.” At least one passenger expressed his ire to AP about the union’s role in the strike. “This is a hostage-taking. We’re here, we’re stuck and we don’t know what to do,” Orly passenger Abdallah Benjemaa, a 31-year-old computer engineer, tells AP as he awaited a flight to Tunisia. “This is a minority imposing its law on the majority.”

In Germany, Lufthansa pilots agreed to halt a planned four-day strike, but the carrier’s flight schedules are expected to remain irregular well into the week.

Lufthansa spokeswoman Claudia Lange tells The Associated Press that the airline is operating on a reduced schedule today. She did not have a number on exactly how many of the carrier’s roughly 1,800 daily flights would be canceled. Lange warns fliers the “consequences of the strike will lead to continued flight irregularities in the following days.”

Adding to fliers’ misery, labor disruptions are expected to spread to Greece on Wednesday. The Associated Press (via The New York Times) reports “the country’s main unions will stage a 24-hour general strike that is set to halt public services and ground flights, adding to Europe’s airline travel disruption caused by walkouts elsewhere.”

usatoday.com