Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport is not quite ready for take-off, as the saying goes.

Thursday, a hundred flights scheduled between 7 a.m. and 2 p.m. are canceled due to a strike by staff demanding a salary increase.

The impact on traffic, which the DGAC explains to have "limited", is only temporary on this issue, but it raises another question: that of the airport's capacity to ensure all flights this summer, at most peak of the tourist season.

The workers' strike is indeed directly linked to the difficult resumption of air traffic in Europe after almost two years of paralysis linked to Covid-19.

Like several poorly prepared European airports, Charles de Gaulle is understaffed.

At the end of April, the boss of Aéroport de Paris (ADP) Augustin de Romanet had estimated the number of positions to be filled at Orly and Roissy at 4,000 and expressed enormous recruitment difficulties.

ADP, which separated from 1,300 employees in 2021 to get through the crisis, is seeking to recruit 600 people to fill in the departures.

A salary increase of 300 euros requested

The shortage mainly affects maintenance technicians, qualified personnel responsible for resolving malfunctions on the gangways or in the sorting of baggage.

Other places of major tension: the screening inspection points (PIF) and the border police (PAF).

The screening inspection points, where luggage and passengers are checked, require around 5,000 agents to function properly at Roissy and Orly.

According to the Union of Air and Airport Security Companies (SESA), between 300 and 500 positions are to be filled.

At Roissy, the ground staff strike is supported by an inter-union (CGT, FO, CFDT, CFTC, CFE-CGC, Unsa and SUD), which is demanding a 300 euro salary increase "unconditionally, for all".

“Despite the resumption of traffic and the profits made, our work is not remunerated at its fair value”, the unions are indignant in a joint leaflet.

"Everything increases, except our salaries", they denounce.

For FO, "the chaos suffered for several weeks by employees working on the many airport platforms in France and Europe is intolerable".

The union estimates that 15,000 jobs have been lost in two years in the aviation sector due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which results in “pressurized employees”.

He would have stolen the luggage of travelers sleeping at Orly

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  • Company

  • Strike

  • Airport

  • ADP: Paris Airports

  • Roissy Charles de Gaulle Airport

  • Covid-19

  • salary