Air France staff to continue strike

By Hajer M'tiri

PARIS

Air France will be able to operate only 70 percent of its flights on Tuesday due to a strike called by its staff demanding a wage increase.

In a statement published Monday, the carrier, which is part of Air France-KLM, said it expects to run 55 percent of its long-haul flights and 65 percent of its medium-haul flights operating to and from Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport.

It said it also expects to operate 80 percent of its short-haul flights at Paris-Orly and other provincial airports.

Strikes are planned on April 17, 18, 23 and 24.

At least 10 unions called for the strikes in a bid to put pressure on the management to increase staff salaries by 6 percent across the board.

The Air France management initially deemed the increase as "impossible" and has put on the table a draft agreement providing a general increase of only 1 percent to be paid in two stages.

However, the carrier management said last week it proposed unions to cover multi-year pay raises negotiations between 2019 and 2021 and a doubling of the salary revaluation planned for 2018.

The Air France-KLM group said last week the seven days of strikes between Feb. 22 and April 11 had cost the company nearly €170 million ($209 million) losses on operating income.