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| Passengers look at information boards at the Lyon Part-Dieu train station in Lyon |
Air France grounded just under a third of flights on Saturday as staff staged a walkout over pay, and travellers also braced for a fresh wave of train strikes starting later in the day, crippling much of Franceโs transport network.
The industrial action at Franceโs flag carrier โ marking the fifth day of worker stoppages over the past month and a half โ has began to overlap with nationwide rolling train strikes, as rail unions protest against President Emmanuel Macronโs reforms.
Air France had forecast that some 70 percent of flights would operate on Saturday.
Unions representing airline staff, locked in a dispute with Air France management over their request for a six percent pay rise, last week called four more strike days in April, in addition to stoppages planned for April 10 and 11.
Queues formed at Parisโ Roissy airport on Saturday as stranded passengers sought to rebook flights.
โWe wasted one day here,โ said Harinath Reddy, an Indian software engineer whose connecting flight in Paris between Nuremberg in Germany and Mumbai was cancelled, causing him to miss another leg of his journey within India.
โIf I have to book new ticket within a short time, itโs very expensive. And they are saying they cannot do anything about that. Itโs totally ridiculous.โ
Train strikes due to start at 1900CET (17GMT) and lasting through to the early hours of Tuesday spelled more chaos for commuters and travellers at the beginning of some mid-term school holidays in France.
The rolling strikes, called in protest at Macronโs bid to modernise the state-run rail company SNCF, through a reform that would end job-for-life guarantees for workers, are set to last until June.
On Sunday, some 35 percent of the workers needed for the network to run smoothly were expected to be absent, SNCF officials said on Saturday. That compares to a 48 percent absentee rate during strikes last Tuesday and Wednesday.
One in five high-speed TGV trains were set to run on Sunday, while three out of four international Eurostar and Thalys routes would be operational, the SNCF said.
