Airlines have come out defiant following the end of the French air traffic control strike saying that their services were uninterrupted.
As EasyJet announced ‘rescue’ flights to repatriate passengers including groups of school children stranded by the 48 hour French ATC strike, Jet2.com and Monarch said their flights had continued to operate.
Jet2.com said it ‘pulled out all the stops’ to ensure its 121 flights still operated to more than 50 destinations.
While Monarch said it operated its entire planned flying programme, which included a total of 136 flights to destinations across Europe.
Andy Parker, head of operations at Monarch Airlines, said: "After careful planning, which included re-routing various flight paths to avoid French airspace and minimise disruption, we managed to keep to our planned programme.
"Contingency plans were put in place for dealing with any delays and this has resulted in minimal disruption to our customer’s travel arrangements.
"Our decision to run our full planned flight schedule was a huge success enabling us to make sure 22,160 of our customers arrived home or to their holiday destination with minimal disruptions to their travel arrangements."
EasyJet revealed that it was forced to cancel 331 flights on Thursday, including 78 to and from the UK. It cancelled 248 flights on Wednesday at the start of the two-day walkout.
