PARIS — Disgruntled would-be passengers complained about hundreds of canceled flights and long airport waits as air traffic controllers began a four-day strike across France on Tuesday.
France's civil aviation agency ordered airlines to cut back half of the flights in and out of Paris' Orly airport and one in four at Charles de Gaulle amid staffing shortages caused by the walkout.
Five unions representing the controllers called the strike to protest plans to integrate European air traffic control, which workers fear will lead to losses of jobs and civil servant benefits.
Fears about future job prospects prompted another strike across the border in Germany this week that disrupted cross-border air traffic. Thousands of pilots at Lufthansa returned to work Tuesday after suspending a strike over concerns that cheaper crews from the German carrier's smaller airlines in other countries could eventually replace them.
Lufthansa warned, however, that the normal flight schedule wasn't likely to resume until Friday. Pilots and management agreed to suspend the strike until March 9 and resume talks.
French union leaders hope the strike in France — coinciding with a seasonal school holiday — will pressure President Nicolas Sarkozy's governing conservatives before next month's regional elections.
Air France said it was maintaining all long-distance flights, with only its routes within France and Europe affected by the strike. Several airports in smaller French cities were shut altogether.
"This is a hostage-taking. We're here, we're stuck and we don't know what to do," Abdallah Benjemaa, a 31-year-old computer engineer, said at Orly as he waited for a new flight to Tunis after his was canceled. "This is a minority imposing its law on the majority."
Alain Wolff, a 57-year-old retail manager trying to transit through Paris, said he felt like he was in limbo between his hometown of Brest, in far western France, and his hopes for a vacation getaway.
"Either I stay this evening, with a chance to leave tomorrow — but it is not sure — or I go back home," Wolff told AP Television News at Orly. "I think that is what I will do (go home) ... That's it. Trapped. Vacation ruined."
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