Privatising air traffic control has got to be a recipe for disaster! It’s ridiculous to compromise safety for the sake of cutting costs.
So I support the right to strike about it. And let’s be honest, for a strike to be effective it has to be noticed – no good doing it on a quiet day in March when hardly anybody’s flying.
If it was about greedy air traffic controllers, who already earn a fortune, striking for more pay, I would not support it, but this is different, I think, and something we should all support.
What the airlines should do in this case is offer a free flight change to people with tickets for that date. They would earn themselves much needed good publicity.
Incidentally, I should have thought that the airlines were also against the privatisation of ATC, also on safety grounds.
Footnote: It’s amazing what risks the air authorities seem prepared to take with air travel. Did you hear that a quarter of Spanish ATCs’ (500 controllers) command of English doesn’t meet the required standard? That they were due to comply by 5 March, but the Spanish government passed a real decreto giving them a further 18 months to get up to scratch?
Unbelievable!