Business and leisure travellers faced a difficult start to the weekend on Friday, 25 September 2026, as a 24-hour national strike hit Italy’s entire civil-aviation sector. According to the crowdsourced monitoring portal Scioperometro, the walk-out involves flight-deck, cabin, ground-handling and some air-traffic-control staff, and affects all commercial airports from Milan to Palermo. Unions are protesting the slow progress in renewing collective agreements and what they describe as chronic understaffing at ENAV (Italy’s air-navigation service provider) and key ground-service contractors. Under Italian strike-law, minimum services must be guaranteed, so flights scheduled in the protected time-bands 07:00-10:00 and 18:00-21:00 continue to operate. Outside those windows, however, dozens of departures were cancelled at Rome-Fiumicino, Milan-Linate, Venice-Marco Polo and Naples-Capodichino before noon. Airlines including ITA Airways, Ryanair and easyJet issued rebooking and refund waivers, while airport operators advised travellers to check flight status before heading to the terminal. The walk-out comes at a delicate moment for the Italian travel market. Traffic has rebounded to above 2019 levels on many domestic and intra-European routes, but staffing shortages have made operations fragile. Business-travel managers in particular warned that disruption could ripple into Monday as aircraft and crews are repositioned. Companies with time-sensitive shipments also face delays because a significant share of Italy’s belly-hold cargo moves on passenger flights. For global-mobility professionals the strike is a reminder to keep Italian flight operations under close review during September, which is traditionally one of the country’s busiest months for labour action. Employers with rotating or temporary assignees should build extra slack into travel schedules, reconfirm meetings and consider rail alternatives on high-frequency domestic city pairs such as Milan–Rome. Unions have already filed additional strike notices for 30 September (4-hour ENAV stoppage) and for a 24-hour multi-sector action on 2 October. Mobility managers are therefore urged to monitor forthcoming industrial calendars and to brief travellers on their EU Air-Passenger-Rights entitlements should their flight be cancelled or heavily delayed.
Source: Scioperometro
