British tourists suffer three hour delay

Thousands of tourists heading for the Balearics were held to ransom by striking French air traffic controllers with flights delayed for up to two hours in some cases. Flights in and out of Britain were hit worse, as the UK air traffic control computer, which went down causing chaos last week, suffered further problems with inbound and outbound flights disrupted. Last night at 7pm, Palma airport authority confirmed that 30 per cent of yesterday's traffic had been hit by the French industrial action. However, Spanish air traffic control had been fore warned of the strike and drawn up a contingency plan in a bid to reduce the number of delays to a minimum. Alternative flight paths were used yesterday with as much traffic as possible being diverted away from French air space. As a result of evasive action by air traffic controllers in Palma and other key Spanish airports, the “majority” of flights into Palma arrived on time. The average delay on flights taking off yesterday was just over an hour, as it was for arriving aircraft. But some UK flights suffered delays in the region of two hours. Passengers most effected were British and German. The airport authority said that despite the chaos in the air, on the ground delayed passengers were “calm and patient as everybody had been warned about yesterday's industrial action.” The strike by French air traffic controllers ended this morning at 8am, but airport authorities and airlines across Europe are waiting to see if a series of strikes is planned for over the summer. Yesterday 446 aircraft landed and took off in Palma carrying some 63'000 passengers.