I jumped out to FF to see if anyone else had this experience. I was on the VCE to PHL flight on Monday (May 16th, US23). We boarded the plane and the captain announced that we'd be stuck there due to a ATC (air traffic control) hold for 1 hr 15 min. A little later he comes back on and says the problem is that the French ATC's decided to do a walk out. After recieving his 1 hr 15 min delay, he decided to radio to ask if he could be moved up in the queue and, instead of moving up the queue, to punish him for asking they tacked another hour on our delay.

A total of 2 1/2 hours late, we departed.

Viva la France!

European ATC is always on strike. That is, when it isn't flying two aircraft into each other. While always first to express disdain for the American form of government, le Grenouille evidently failed to learn from the Reagan era remedial work performed on our own recalcitrant controllers, many of whom have been helping bag groceries ever since.

In the past week, French, Italian and Greek ATC have all gone on strike for at least part of a day (16th, 13th and 18th, respectively). The month of May, with it's already large number of legal holidays (4) in most European countries, lends itself well to striking to make the long weekends even longer.