Airport Disruption This Week: Strikes in Europe and Lingering US Outages

If you are flying in the next few weeks, there is a lot to keep track of. Air traffic controllers at Charleroi Airport in Belgium are on strike every night, Italy has a crowded strike calendar through October, and France has a national flight crew strike notice for mid October. On top of that, the US has had a run of IT and air traffic control outages that caused delays well beyond the airports where they started. None of this means your flight will definitely be affected, but it is worth knowing what is going on and building in a bit of extra caution.

Strikes across Europe this week and next

Air traffic controllers employed by skeyes at Brussels South Charleroi Airport are striking every night from 22:00 to 08:00, for 24 consecutive nights running from 16 September to 10 October 2026. The dispute is over night-work pay. Around 800 flight movements are expected to be affected over the whole period, mostly Ryanair services, since the airline bases a large fleet at Charleroi. If you have an evening or early morning flight through Charleroi before 10 October, check with the airline directly.

Italy remains one of the busiest countries for strike activity. A nationwide general strike on Friday 2 October includes rail action between 11:00 and 14:00, and 13 separate strikes are due to start in Italy within the next 30 days. Two aviation specific actions are scheduled for 16 October: a security staff strike at Venice Marco Polo and a nationwide easyJet flight crew strike running the full 24 hours. If you are flying with easyJet in Italy that day, it is worth checking the airline's own channels for alternatives rather than waiting to see what happens at the airport.

France has a confirmed strike notice covering flight crew and pilots, running from just after midnight on Saturday 17 October to just before midnight on Wednesday 21 October. It is still too early to know how many flights will be cancelled or delayed, but a five day window is long enough that it is sensible to check your booking well before you travel if your dates fall within it.

Separately, Barcelona El Prat has had an indefinite ground handling strike since 4 August, called by the CGT union, running 24 hours a day with no end date agreed. This mainly affects baggage handling and turnaround times rather than cancelling flights outright, but it can mean longer queues and slower processing, so allow extra time if you are departing from or connecting through Barcelona.

US technical outages and thin air traffic control staffing

The US government will not shut down on 1 October, after a continuing resolution signed in early September kept funding in place through 11 December. That matters because the 2025 shutdown caused significant FAA and TSA staffing disruption, and the underlying problem has not gone away. The FAA currently has roughly 10,800 fully certified controllers against a staffing target of 13,800, and the gap widened further during the shutdown because it paused training progression for new recruits. Keep 11 December in mind as a date that could bring renewed disruption if funding talks stall again.

More immediately, a telecommunications fault at the FAA's Philadelphia TRACON facility on 21 September led to ground stops at Newark Liberty, JFK, LaGuardia and Boston Logan, after a fibre optic cable was accidentally cut during construction work in New Jersey. Delays and cancellations lingered for a couple of days afterwards. The following day, an IT outage at San Diego International Airport forced staff to process passengers by hand using iPads and paper tickets, though the airport stayed open and flights kept running.

Weather has added to the picture too. Chicago O'Hare recorded more cancellations than any other airport in the world during a stretch of disruption that began on 14 September, and severe thunderstorms over Colorado delayed more than 650 flights at Denver on 21 September. None of these events are predictable in advance, which is exactly why it helps to have a routine for checking your flight rather than relying on a single source.

What to actually do before you travel

The common thread in all of this is that terminal screens and even airline apps can lag behind what is really happening, especially during a fast moving IT fault or a sudden ATC problem. The safest approach is to check more than once, and check close to the time you leave for the airport.

If disruption does catch you out, your rights depend on the route, the airline and the cause, and strikes are treated differently from technical faults in some cases. The official source for your specific booking is always the airline, so start there. Our guide on what to do next if your flight is delayed walks through the practical steps, and airline support links can save you time finding the right contact.

If you are heading to the airport to collect someone rather than fly yourself, the same strikes and outages can push arrival times around, so it is worth checking before you set off. Our airport pickup guide covers how to time it so you are not waiting, or arriving too early, when things are uncertain.