Travel chaos due to industrial action during Easter holidays to hit Spain and Italy

Wednesday, April 10, 2019

The effects of industrial actions will be severely affecting travellers heading to parts of Continental Europe in April.  It has been predicted that the uncertainty travellers will face will be more than Brexit while Spain will  have the worst strike-related disruption.

In a dispute over pay and rosters on Friday, April 12 the security staff at Madrid airport belonging to the ATES union have threatened an indefinite strike.

The ground staff belonging to the Union Sindical Obrera and Union General de Trabajadores on Easter Sunday and  April 24 had called for a one-day walk-outs that will disrupt the Spanish airports.

On Wednesday April 17, Spain’s railways workers at Adif (the infrastructure operator, equivalent to Network Rail) plan to strike.

There will be  further cancellations on April 23, as a planned strike by the train drivers working for Renfe, the main Spanish train operators, may well lead to more cancellations.

So far, talks at the Spanish conciliation service, SIMA, failed to reach an agreement.

The strike planned on April 29 on the Barcelona Metro is expected to be more disruptive for commuters than the visitors.

The bus and train links into the Barcelona are much faster as the city’s airport is on the Metro system.

On April 13, in Italy the Alitalia staff will go on a 24 hours strike along with that during the same day some of the workers at the two main airports, Linate and Malpensa will stop work.

From July 27 to October 27, 2019, the Linate airport close to the centre of Milan will remain close for improvement work.

In September there will be closures that will put a lot of pressure on the other main airport, Malpensa and Bergamo. Linate will be handling 2.3 m passengers during the three months.

In Scotland a wave of industrial action has already begun involving the air-traffic who belong to the Prospect union. On issues concerning pay they are  in dispute with Highlands and Islands Airports Ltd (HIAL).

As the air-traffic controllers have begun a work-to-rule and an overtime ban leading to Loganair flights cancellations.

After talks with Acas a planned strike on Friday 26 April, which would have closed six Scottish airports, has been called off. The parties mentioned in a joint statement that the prospect agreed to suspend the strike action on the 26 April to allow discussions to continue.

On April 5 a Loganair flight took off from Kirkwall airport without any air traffic control and the airline mentioned that they followed safe alternative procedures.

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