Air France, hobbled by a strike involving more than a quarter of its pilots, said about 80 percent of its flights would operate on Sunday and Monday, reports Bloomberg.
Air France-KLM Group’s French arm will honour 83 percent of its scheduled long-haul flights and 86 percent of its domestic ones on Sunday, the company said in a statement. On Monday, more than 85 percent will operate in both those categories, it said, adding that last-minute cancellations or delays were still possible.
In a labour walkout that coincides with the start of the European soccer championship, which France is hosting, pilots are protesting the carrier’s imposition of more work hours without additional pay and pushing it to order 26 long-haul planes. Pilots only stop working for periods of about three hours three times a day, Emmanuel Mistrali, a spokesman for the largest pilot union, said by telephone.
"Our goal is that our demands are heard, not to stifle the company," he said on Saturday. The union, called by its acronym SNPL, estimates that 70 percent of employees have partly stopped working.
Ten cities across France are welcoming 2.5 million spectators for the Euro tournament that began Friday. The flight cancellations add to railroaders, energy workers and garbage collectors’ work stoppages due to other disputes, including over the French government’s labor reform.
The conflict may cost the airline tens of millions of euros, Air France-KLM Chief Executive Officer Alexandre de Juniac said last week. A pilots’ strike in 2014 cost the company about 500 million euros ($563 million) in lost revenue. Even so, meeting unions’ demands would require an 11 percent jump in the pilot payroll, currently about 1 billion euros, Gilles Gateau, the carrier’s head of personnel, said Thursday.