Orly is the one that has suffered the most in these first months of 2023. Major airports serving Paris have suffered from strikes by air traffic controllers against the pension reform, which caused them to lose about 470,000 passengers in the first quarter, their manager, ADP, said Monday. During the strike, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGAC) asked airlines to give up some 20% of their flights at Orly, but also other airports in the region, to match the number of controllers at their posts and the expected air traffic.

In March alone, in the midst of contesting the reform wanted by President Emmanuel Macron, and passed thanks to the use of the 49.3, Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle and Orly suffered a traffic loss of 390,000 passengers, or 5.3% of the 7.4 million travelers actually welcomed, said the group in its monthly traffic release.

Orly suffered more than Roissy

Passengers who passed through the two major Ile-de-France airports in March accounted for 85.4% of their 2019 traffic, before Covid-19 torpedoed the global aviation sector. This is a departure from the generally upward trend observed since then: the ratio was 89.3% in January and 92% in February. For its Ile-de-France airports, ADP has set its objectives for the year between 87% and 93% of 2019 passenger volumes.

It is logically Orly that has suffered the most from the social movement, achieving in March only 86.4% of its passenger traffic in 2019, against 100.7% in February. Roissy also declined, but less sharply, to 84.9% of the figures of four years ago against 88.2% in February.

ADP largely profitable in 2022

Dragged down by this underperformance, ADP, which manages a total of 29 airports worldwide, directly or via subsidiaries or partners, from Almaty to Santiago de Chile via Antalya (Turkey) and Delhi (India), also slowed down on this perimeter, with 95.6% of passengers in March 2019 compared to 96.7% in February.

After two years of losses due to the pandemic, the group, in which the French State is a 50.6% shareholder, has largely returned to the green in 2022, at 516 million euros in net profit. It did not mention Monday any possible updates to its annual traffic targets. When it published its financial results in February, it estimated that it could regain or even exceed the number of passengers welcomed before the crisis on all its platforms around the world this year.


  • Roissy CDG Airport
  • Orly Airport
  • Pension reform 2023
  • ADP : Aéroports de Paris
  • Strike
  • Local
  • Paris
  • Ile