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The last week has seen a number of travel-related protests, many of which have been affecting significant numbers of people moving from point A to point B…

The big story is of course France, where students, protesting a new labor law that would allow young workers to be more easily fired, blocked trains, roads, and airports. Even aircraft under construction were affected, as groups of protestors blocked a Toulouse-area road used by trucks carrying parts for the Airbus A380. (After aircraft operated by British discount carrier Jet2 were grounded by striking air traffic controllers, the airline’s chief, Philip Meeson, stirred the pot with some particularly feisty, and by some measures offensive, href="http://www.jet2.com/News.aspx?id=65">comments…)

In the United States, 275 Delta pilots picketed in Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, protesting the bankrupt airline’s hardball tactics with the pilots’ union. Days later, nearly 95% of the pilots voted to authorize their union’s management to call a strike if necessary.

Airline workers in Bolivia staged a protest as well, blocking runways in La Paz, Santa Cruz, Cochabamba, and Tarija, demanding that the government nationalize the nearly-bankrupt carrier Lloyd Aero Boliviano. On March 31, the Bolivian military took control of the airports; the airline’s international flights have all been cancelled indefinitely.

Finally, protests over airport expansion hit the United Kingdom and India. Marking the 60th anniversary of Heathrow Airport, members of the environmental group Plane Stupid (previously mentioned here) chained themselves to the door of airport management offices. In India, protestors objected to the plans to expand Chennai’s airport without consulting local residents sufficiently.

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley got off comparatively easy, given that plans to buy a cemetery in order to use the land for O’Hare Airport expansion have been challenged in the courts, and not on the runways. But the dead have been known to vote in Chicago elections, so anything can happen.

(images: BBC, NBC5 Chicago)
tags: travel | air travel | environmentalism | airport expansion | labor protests | Heathrow | Delta | O’Hare