Originally Posted by
gobears293
Yeah I'm getting nervous. Flying SFO-CDG-FCO on Sunday (with wife and daughter). My parents on the same routing the next day. At least for now there is no chance of a preemptive rebooking on KLM or DL/ITA, correct?
Any recommendations on best social media or other news source to be alerted if/when the strike is planned? AF Twitter rarely seems to have these updates.
You may want to watch public transport sites in France like of the metro in Paris. I live in Paris for a year, and have learned not to get too nervous
a) they announce the strike days. On other days, you can be pretty sure flights go normally. So if 23 March is announced as the next strike day, do not expect too much hassle on other days
b) in practice these are not 100% strikes. I need RER B to go to CDG. Even on heavy strike days, they cut just 2 out of 3 or 3 out of 4 trains, which implies still a train every 8 minutes or so (and a change at Paris Nord, normally not needed). So just leaving 30 min earlier as usual I could reach CDG perfectly in time. Since all work from home on such days, the Metro's are not even overloaded despite having just a fraction of regular capacity.
c) As indicated on 15 March (main strike day) AF forecasted 100% flights on CDG and 80% on ORY, and some trouble locally. From BOD where I left everything was normal.
My overall verdict - only if you travel via CDG on an announced strike day you have some risk. But even that is a risk that seems not too high. I probably only would do an effort to rebook if you would pass France on a strike day if you can avoid France, nothing more, but even without that in the past month you would have been fine most of the time..