Airlines cut flights as strike bites

PARIS, France -- Airlines across Europe have been forced to cancel dozens of flights as a strike by French air traffic control staff entered a second day.

The 36-hour strike began at 1800 GMT on Wednesday and is due to end at 0600 GMT on Friday.

Air France has cut 85 percent of its short-haul flights within France and Europe because of the action.

British Airways has cancelled all but four of its 97 flights in and out of France during the strike period, while UK budget airline easyJet has cut flights between Nice, Geneva and Amsterdam.

Germany's Lufthansa said it has also cancelled 40 flights between Germany and France.

The French civil aviation authority, DGAC, said it would ensure minimal service during the strike but that only "a limited number of flights will be assured ... at French airports."

Unions want the French government to lobby against a Europe-wide air-traffic plan, which they say will lead to privatisation of civil aviation.

Strikes hit banks, police

The European Union hopes to implement a "single sky" plan to eliminate nationally run air traffic control.

The plan would let planes fly routes mapped out by logic rather than Europe's borders.

The plan's proponents say it would boost capacity by up to 50 percent, making room for more planes in the skies and at the gates.

The start of the strike coincided with similar disruption over different issues by the country's bank workers and police officers.

Bank of France workers responsible for the distribution of euro notes went on strike for a second day on Wednesday, slowing preparations for the launch of euro cash in January.

The workers are striking over work conditions, wages and management's communication, which they say is poor. The strike concerns a department at the Bank of France in Paris in which about 300 workers are employed.

Elsewhere, hundreds of French gendarmes took to the streets for a second day on Wednesday in an unprecedented protest aimed at wringing concessions from the government on working conditions and pay.

About 700 uniformed gendarmes, many in police vehicles, gathered outside their regional headquarters in the Loire Valley city of Nantes in defiance of a ban on demonstrations by the 200-year-old paramilitary police force.

There were similar protests on Tuesday involving about 300 gendarmes -- some masked to hide their identity from superiors -- mainly concentrated around the southern cities of Marseille and Montpellier.

Separately, a group of 80 uniformed and retired gendarmes protested outside their headquarters in the Basque country town of Saint-Pee-sur-Nivelle in southwest France.