Spain’s peak holiday season faces fresh turbulence after the USO union representing roughly 450 easyJet cabin-crew members at Barcelona, Málaga and Palma de Mallorca announced nine days of walk-outs. The stoppages are scheduled for 1-3, 15-17 and 29-31 July and come on top of previous industrial action at Ryanair and air-traffic-control bottlenecks over France. USO says wage talks have stalled and is demanding pay parity with colleagues in France and Germany. Although easyJet insists it will “operate its full schedule”, labour shortages across Europe make contingency rostering difficult, and similar protests in 2025 forced hundreds of cancellations. Business travellers using Spain’s three busiest leisure gateways should prepare for rolling disruption, re-routing and last-minute aircraft swaps. The strikes coincide with Spain’s first major “operación salida” weekend and with record passenger volumes forecast by Aena. Missed connections could cascade into long-haul networks, particularly for tech and pharmaceutical firms routing project teams through Barcelona El Prat. Practical steps for mobility managers include tracking flight status via NDC feeds, holding refundable hotel blocks, and reminding staff of EU261 rights: airlines must offer reimbursement or re-routing and cover reasonable subsistence costs when delays exceed two hours on short-haul sectors. Longer term, the dispute highlights widening pay gaps inside pan-European carriers’ country subsidiaries. Unions argue that cost-of-living differentials have narrowed and that Spanish crews should receive the same base salary as peers flying identical aircraft types elsewhere in the group. Unless a deal is reached quickly, similar tactics could spread to other low-cost bases such as Alicante and Tenerife in August.
Source: The Gulf Time
