STRIKE ACTION: Air France offers travellers who wish to postpone their flight with Hop! free of charge exchanges
The pilots of Hop! are on strike this Monday. The movement should cause little disruption on Monday among the flights of this regional subsidiary of Air France, however, announced the management of the company.
“Air France plans to cover all of its flights to and from Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle and Paris-Orly and almost all of its flights from French regions,” a spokesman told AFP. company words Sunday. Hop! insures part of the domestic flights of Air France and serves flights between French regions and Europe.
Flights postponed without charge
The disruptions will not concern either “long-haul flights” or “short and medium-haul flights operated by an Air France Airbus plane”, specifies the parent company on its website. Air France offers travellers who wish to postpone their flight free of charge. Faced with the reduction of the fleet and the suppression of the Hop! Brand, the pilots are worried about their careers and their jobs.
The SNPL , the first union of Hop! Pilots, calls a strike to demand better wages and working conditions, closer to those of Air France pilots. He also wants to see “perpetuated” from 2020 the transfer each year of 70 pilots to Air France and offers transitional solutions, when management seeks to limit these departures in order to preserve its activity, according to Emelyne Fronteau, president of SNPL Hop!
More than half of the pilots involved
The union had filed in late December a strike notice of 144 hours spread over twelve days, postponed the time to discuss with the management of Hop! The latter proposed a wage increase of 3%, deemed insufficient by the union. The notice runs from Monday, from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., and the strike must be extended to other days, the next being Thursday, Emelyne Fronteau told AFP. “More than half of the drivers are engaged on Monday,” she says.
Founded in 2013, Hop! employs around 2,500 people including 750 pilots. The company is the result of the merger of three former regional subsidiaries of Air France (Brit Air, Regional and Airlinair). The last strike of its pilots dates back to the summer of 2017. Air France has been shaken in recent days by some social turmoil, which has become rare since the arrival of Ben Smith at the helm of Air France-KLM. The tricolour company thus experienced Friday and Saturday stoppages at its stops in Orly and in regions at the call of the unions of the Air France short-haul network (CGT, FO, CFDT, CFE-CGC and Unsa), mobilized against the increased use of subcontracting after several voluntary departure plans.
This call was “very followed in Nantes, Toulouse and Bordeaux”, declared to AFP Christophe Malloggi, of FO Air France. Management did not communicate the rate of strikers but indicated that “the entire flight program” had been provided.
