00:00Travellers in Europe are being warned of disruption over a series of strikes starting in Italy.
00:05Airport ground staff and flight attendants are planning a four-hour strike on Saturday afternoon
00:10at various airports, including Milan, Pisa and Florence.
00:14We can now speak to the travel broadcaster and commentator Simon Calder.
00:17Simon, thank you so much for being with us.
00:19Let's start with Italy. Do we know what's happening there yet?
00:22And is the strike causing much disruption?
00:25It certainly is, I'm afraid.
00:27This is a kind of repeat of the very, very frequent industrial action that we will get.
00:33Very often, strikes really of just four hours by airport staff, by people working for individual airlines.
00:42We've also got a strike by some pilots belonging to EasyJet.
00:47Looking at the disruption on Saturday, the main problem seems to be at Milan Malpenza,
00:54the main airport in the north of Italy.
00:56We've got EasyJet cancellations to London, to Paris, to Athens, and a number of domestic flights as well.
01:04Looking at Rome's Fiumicino airport, the capital, of course, its main airport.
01:10The main disruption seems to be among airline, the ITA airline, the national carrier.
01:17And we've got, for example, cancellations to and from Brussels and Zurich.
01:22And on top of that, looking more widely at places like Naples, a number of flights actually rescheduled to avoid the four-hour delay,
01:31which, of course, causes disruption, but not to the extent that thousands of passengers are finding across Italy today by having their flights cancelled.
01:41Right. And strikes also planned in France, aren't they, later for this week?
01:46Do we know if that might compare in terms of disruption?
01:50It's going to be really quite a bigger scale, I think.
01:53So, what's happening this coming week is a lot of protests against the government that's hoping to force through austerity measures,
02:03which some economists would say were much-needed moves.
02:08But, unfortunately, the government, which looks fairly likely to fall in the next couple of days, is getting massive opposition.
02:15There's a kind of loose coalition of groups calling themselves block-on-two, let's block everything.
02:24And they, on Wednesday, are very much hoping to ground many of the trains that are running across France,
02:31particularly the high-speed network, as well as causing disruption at airports, at seaports and on the roads of France.
02:39It's difficult to see exactly what's going to happen because, at the moment, there's no clarity among the various groups.
02:48Unlike just looking ahead an extra week, you have French air traffic controllers going on strike again.
02:56And to give you some idea of this, we had industrial action by a relatively small number of controllers in France.
03:03That led to tens of thousands of passengers having their flights cancelled because so many aircraft, for instance, going from Northern Europe, Scandinavia, Germany, the UK,
03:16to places like Spain and Italy, have to go over French airspace.
03:20That causes mayhem as well.
03:23So, these strikes in different countries, clearly different conditions in different countries,
03:29but would you say, on the whole, they are mainly about the pay and working conditions for staff?
03:34Or do they reflect deeper pressures across the transport sector?
03:37You mentioned France, of course.
03:38There's much more concern there about broader economic problems.
03:44Yes.
03:44So, if we take them all in turn, I mean, aviation has had a stressful summer with record numbers of flights.
03:53So, there's a lot of people in the many, many groups that go towards getting a flight into the air who are taking action.
04:00In France, it's general unhappiness with the idea that the state should withdraw some of the generous provisions that it makes towards workers and so on.
04:11We've also got a strike that's going to be affecting people in London, actually starting as early as tomorrow for five days.
04:20This is on the London Underground, the famous tube system.
04:24And that is all to do with wanting a reduction from the current 35 hours a week to 32 hours.
04:31So, it's all about people who are working in the high-stress business of transport really wanting to be either better rewarded or have a less stressful working life or both.
04:45And, unfortunately, with so many of these depending on public budgets and public spending,
04:52it's difficult to see how we're going to reach a conclusion before, well, millions more travellers are seriously inconvenienced.
05:00Well, yes, and with repeated strikes, especially in aviation and rail, we've had it in France, in the UK, Canada recently as well with flight attendants there.
05:09I mean, could this actually accelerate a shift towards maybe sustainable travel choices?
05:14A really good question.
05:16It could do, particularly since aviation is so prone to any kind of disruption from any group of workers.
05:24However, the big fear is, and this is particularly the case among tourism bosses,
05:30that actually, if you make it difficult for people to go to places, they won't switch from one mode of transport to another.
05:37They simply won't go.
05:39And since travel is such an important ingredient of the global economy, that's giving them plenty of concern.
05:46Really great to talk to you, Simon.
05:48Thank you very much indeed for joining us.
05:50That's Simon Calder.
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