A strike by Belgian air traffic controllers has ended after management at Skeyes, Belgium's national air traffic control authority, reached an agreement with trade unions. Flight operations across Belgium's airports resumed at 9 p.m. on Tuesday, following a day of widespread disruption that saw hundreds of flights cancelled or delayed.
The industrial action was the second in quick succession. An unannounced overnight strike had already caused significant delays and cancellations at multiple Belgian airports before services resumed around 9:30 a.m. A second, again unannounced walkout then began at 2 p.m., bringing all departures and arrivals at Brussels Airport to a standstill until 9 p.m. In total, around 140 flights were scrapped at Brussels Airport alone, with a further 39 cancelled at Brussels South Charleroi Airport. Services at Ostend, Antwerp, and Liège were also disrupted. Hundreds of passengers were left stranded in terminals during the stoppage.
At the heart of the dispute is Skeyes's plan to consolidate air traffic control for the regional airports of Liège and Charleroi into a new digital control centre in Namur, a city in central Belgium. Currently, each regional airport operates its own control tower; from next year, controllers would work remotely from Namur while remaining responsible for their respective airports. Staff have raised concerns about the adequacy of compensation for relocating, the safety of the new digital system, unresolved issues with shift scheduling, and pay disparities between controllers at different airports. A preliminary agreement reached on Monday was rejected by the wider workforce after it was never put to them for approval. Some 190 controllers had already written to Belgium's Minister of Mobility, Jean-Luc Crucke of Les Engagés, a centrist party, but received no response.
With the deal now signed, normal operations have resumed, though the coming days are expected to remain busy as airlines work through a backlog of rescheduled flights. Brussels Airlines said its teams were working to find solutions for affected passengers and urged travellers to check the airlines' app, website, and SMS updates, warning that call-centre wait times were longer than usual due to the high volume of enquiries.
The disruption underscores the tensions that can accompany digitalisation in safety-critical sectors. While automation promises operational efficiencies, workers at Skeyes argue that the pace of change, the relocation demands, and the unresolved legacy issues around pay and scheduling made industrial conflict inevitable. Whether the new accord fully addresses those underlying grievances remains to be seen.