France Forced to Cut Half of Flights Amid Strikes

France’s civil aviation authority says airlines must drastically cut back on their flights into France on Tuesday due to strikes over the government’s pension reform bill.

The DGAC says airlines must cancel 50 percent of flights from Paris’ Orly airport and 30 percent from other airports nationwide, including the country’s largest airport, Paris’ Charles de Gaulle.

The DGAC advised travelers flying in on Tuesday to check with their airlines.

Open-ended strikes over the government’s plans to raise retirement age to 62 have snarled travel here for nearly a week.

The strikes forced similar cancelations at Orly and Charles de Gaulle last Tuesday, with mostly domestic flights and European flights scrapped.

French oil workers on Monday defied the government’s demand to get back to work and end scattered fuel shortages, stepping up their fight against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to raise the retirement age to 62.

Striking workers piled up tires and set them ablaze in front of a refinery at Grandpuits, east of Paris, after authorities issued a legal order insisting that some strikers reopen the facility. Workers said Monday they would refuse, as curls of heavy black smoke wafted into the air.

Other employees and residents formed a “human chain” to prevent the refinery workers from entering the plant, and union leaders said they expected an imminent police intervention.

Strikers have blockaded a dozen French refineries and numerous oil depots in the last week as part of widespread protests against the government’s plan to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62.

Prime Minister Francois Fillon pledged Sunday to do what’s necessary to prevent fuel shortages, saying the government won’t allow such shortages to hurt the French economy. Fearful motorists have flocked to gas stations in panic and found many empty, while aviation authorities told short-haul planes coming in from other European destinations to bring enough fuel to get back.

The head of France’s petroleum industry body said fuel reserves were “enough to keep us going for a few weeks.”

Jean-Louis Schilansky, president of the Petrol Industries Association, warned however that if the strikers continue to block fuel depots and if the nation’s truckers join the movement, “then we will have a very big problem.”

Truckers did join the fray on Monday, staging organized slowdowns aimed at snarling highway traffic. French TV showed images of cars and trucks on a “Snail Operation,” driving at a snail’s pace along the main highway between Paris and the northern city of Lille, with red union flags waving out the windows.

Meanwhile, French youth who have rallied to the cause burned tires and set up blockades Monday outside some high schools in Paris and nearby suburbs.

Students from Lycee Joliot Curie in the Paris suburb of Nanterre tried to blockade their school, with about 100 of them facing off against police.

GREG KELLER, AP Business Writer PARIS