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CNN Live At Daybreak

If You're Traveling to Europe, You Could Be In For Some Big Delays

Aired June 19, 2002 - 05:12   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: If you are traveling to Europe, you could be in for some big delays. Air controllers in France are on strike today and work stoppages are also planned in Greece, Portugal and Italy.

Our Diana Muriel joins us live from Orly Airport outside of Paris with details on this protest.

Good morning.

DIANA MURIEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.

Yes, major disruption all around Europe today. We've got the French air controllers on strike, which means that there's almost no flights leaving Orly Airport today. The skies are very quiet and absolutely silent right now.

We are seeing also disruption in Greece, in Hungary, in Portugal and in Italy. The strike there will start in approximately one hour's time. It will go on for most of the rest of the afternoon. The French strike will go on till about midnight France time. And that will mean that the disruption will continue into Thursday and Friday because planes, of course, will be in the wrong place. The schedules are going to be very difficult to meet over the next few days while the airlines try and get their planes back in the right place.

Lufthansa is canceling many of its flights and it's using larger aircraft in order to transport more passengers. We're seeing Al Italia canceling 50 of their flights, leaving 8,000 passengers in the wrong place. And the problem, Carol, is all about the single sky policy that Brussels, the European Union, want to introduce. They want to introduce a single air traffic control system for the whole of the European region. They say that that would save around 4.7 billion euros a year and that it will increase capacity in the region by around 50 percent as well as making everything much more efficient.

But the French unions and many others are concerned that this, first of all, will rid them of their national sovereignty over their air space, but also will introduce privatization into the industry. And they say that that simply does not fit with what they are trying to do.

Air traffic control is not something, they say, that can be privatized, that radar and maintenance, these are all integral parts of what they do and they really don't want to see that -- Carol.

COSTELLO: So is this just a one day strike?

MURIEL: At the moment it's a one day strike, for France, which is the worst case, and it's just a few hours in the rest of Europe. But what the French unions are saying is that unless this whole single sky policy opens up to wider public debate throughout Europe and it's not just left to the politicians at the European Union in Brussels, then they will continue their strikes and we could see more one day stoppages throughout the summer, causing massive disruption for summer holiday passengers throughout the region -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Ooh, that could be bad.

Thank you.

Diana Muriel reporting live for us from Paris this morning from Orly Airport, outside of Paris, I should say.

Thank you for that report.

And if you are traveling to Europe, call ahead.

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