French air traffic controllers are on strike (again) and scheduled to be so through Wednesday morning.
The fallout? Perhaps 1,000 flight cancellations and significant delays for flights throughout France and for flights scheduled to fly over France.
“The impact of the seventh strike day in France this year will be quite significant: airlines have been forced to reduce their flight programme by a third. We expect to see escalating delays throughout the day, forcing airlines to cut back on their flight programme even further. Given France’s its geographical location, ATC strikes in France and the reduction of capacity in French airspace considerably penalises passengers throughout the continent,” said Thomas Reynaert, Managing Director of Airlines for Europe (A4E.)
Plan accordingly… and check with your airline for your options.
Stats to chat about
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) keeps track of airline industry performance statistics and recently shared some 2016 statistics showing that system-wide, airlines carried 3.8 billion passengers on scheduled services last year, an increase of 7% over 2015, representing an additional 242 million air trips.
A few other tidbits of note from the 2016 report on airline industry performance:
The top five airlines ranked by total scheduled passengers carried (domestic and international) were:
- Southwest Airlines (151.8 million)
- American Airlines (144.2 million)
- Delta Air Lines (143.3 million)
- China Southern Airlines (114.5 milllion)
- Ryanair (112 million)
Who is doing all that traveling? We are!
- US Citizens are the world’s most prevalent travelers. Some 810 million passengers traveled on US passports in 2016 comprising 21% of all passengers worldwide.
- Internationally, American citizens also took top place, comprising 9.5% of all travelers. This was followed by citizens of the UK (7.8%), Germany (6.5%), China (6.4%) and France (4.1%).
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