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Italy's nationwide air traffic strike occasioned nearly 1,000 flight cancellation on Saturday, 15 July 2023—so stated Italian news outlets.

According to the unions by which the air traffic control strike was called, almost one-hundred-percent of Italy's air traffic control personnel participated in the strike action.

The walkout included airport ground staff, such as ticket and gate agents, concession workers, baggage handlers, and security personnel.

Italy's major airports—Rome’s Fiumicino International Airport "Leonardo da Vinci' (FCO), Milan’s Malpensa Airport (MXP), Naples’s Capodichino International Airport (NAP), and Venice’s Marco Polo Airport (VCE)—each saw the cancellation of several hundred flights. All told, some 250,000 air-travelers were affected by the work-stoppage.

The consumer protection association Codacons posits monetary damages due to cancellations and delays were in the tens-of-millions-of-euros.

In addition to the aforementioned workers, walkouts were also undertaken by pilots at Malta Air, which operates Ryanair flights in Italy, as well pilots and flight attendants in the employ of budget airline Vueling.

The airport, air traffic control, pilot, and flight-attendant strikes were preceded by a 13 July rail strike which precipitated similarly dire repercussions across Italy’s public transportation networks.

Italy’s lucrative tourism industry stands to be particularly hard hit by the rail and air-transport strikes—the entirety of which are presumed to have been planned by labor unions to coincide with the busy summer travel season.

What the labor unions could not have planned is the heat-wave under which Southern Europe is currently languishing. Across Italy, from Ragusa in the south to Tirano in the north, stranded travelers are struggling to cope with oppressively hot temperatures—their protestations loudly amplified by Italy's notoriously sensationalist media.

FMI: https://www.enav.it/en/what-we-do/we-manage-italian-airspace/air-traffic-control