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State of alarm extended to protect Christmas flights
The Spanish government voted yesterday to extend the state of alarm to 15th January 2011. The decision means that the air traffic controllers, who staged a 24 hour wildcat strike on the 4th December, will remain under military control over the Christmas holidays, safeguarding all flights through Spanish airspace.
The wildcat strike caused massive disruption over one of Spain's holiday weekends, leaving an estimated 600,000 passengers in travel chaos and causing over €100 million in losses for the tourism business sector. The government implemented a state of alarm in response to the strike and were keen to ensure that the air traffic controllers did not cause similar disruption over the busy Christmas season.
The dispute between the government and the air traffic controllers has been running since February 2010. The air traffic controllers submitted a document signed by 85% of their members to the government on Wednesday evening pledging that no strike action would be taken over Christmas if the state of alarm was allowed to expire. However, this was rejected by the government, such is the distrust between these two parties.
