On Friday October 25, a national strike has been planned for Italy by the staff of the national airline, Alitalia. The public servants and private sector employees are angry about low pay, pensions and working conditions. So far, more than 200 flights have been canceled along with U.K. links from Lon don to Rome and Milan, the effect on travel will be highly significant.
Many individual airports are also expected to experience strikes and apart from the 24-hour walk-outs there will be a four-hour stoppage by air traffic control (ATC) workers between 1 and 5 pm.
The Ops Group says of the ATC strikes stated that when these four-hour strikes go ahead, overflights and incoming intercontinental flights (ie those from outside Europe) are normally not significantly affected, but there are often big delays for flights to/from Italian airports.
32 flights have been cancelled by easyjet, affecting up to 5,000 passengers and a spokesperson of the airline said that they were advised of an Air Traffic Control and ground handling agents strike in Italian airports on Friday 25 October.
The affected customers can change their flight free of charge or receive a refund, they have also been notified by e-mail and SMS.
They requested all customers flying to or from Italy on Friday 25 October to allow extra time to get to the airport and check the status of their flight on the website and Flight Tracker for live updates.
They apologised to customers for any inconvenience caused and assured the passengers that they were doing all possible to minimise the disruption.
Ryanair mentioned that they expected some level of disruption on the day including delays and the possibility of a small number of cancellations.
