The Spanish and Fench ATC both have daily work to rule actions, on top of occasional all out stoppages.
What that means in reality is that EVERY flight going through their airspace gets a slot outbound first thing in the morning. Now in my experience this means we arrive late on the first sector of the day, usually to find that we have a slot for the return that is being based upon our SCHEDULED departure time, which we have usually arrived about ten minutes before or indeed after. The result is that this slot on the aircrafts second flight ofthe day is often missed and the replacement slot usually involves a hefty delay of an hour or more. Given that EasyJets' business model is one of low cost ( and I am not going to be drawn in to the argument of ticket prices as that is a different argument ) then we utilise our aircraft as much as possible which means not having them on the ground longer than is necessary to turn them around. That means there is no "fat" in the schedule to absorb these morning delays and they carry on right throught the day until the aircrafts' last sector at night, with every other sector gaining slots throughout the day then the delay grows and grows.
In 10 years plus in the airlines, I can say this is not the norm and some pressure needs to be exerted on the French and Spanish to sort this out. I have heard proffessional pilots and proffessional air traffic controllers actually arguing over this on air! Frustrations are growing and that does not have a place in aviation!
When we are actually in the effected airspace ATC will not grant short cuts, even when they are plainly available, they will not let us climb or descend into more favourable wind conditions, even when they are clearly available.
EasyJet are now fiddling with the schedule to creat "firebreaks" in the middle of the day to try and absorb these delays, this has resulted in some flights being delayed, in advance, or even cancelled. They have also brought in additional outside help from other charter airlines to give us additional capacity.
Now the new CEO has also admitted in the press that we have crewing problems as well. Both pilots and cabin crew have a specific number of hours they can work based upon the time they report for duty and the number of flights they are operating. Generally we are exceeding these if we feel we are still safe to operate using our discretion, which is permitted under CAA rules. We are also on occassion working in to our days off to keep the show on the road. However, charged with the safety of everyone on the aircraft, there are also often occassions when the crew have to say, sorry, but we have done as much as we safely can for today and have to call a stop to it. It is at this point that a standby crew should take over, but this barrel is often empty these days and that is where the crewing problems come into the equation.
So in defence of ATC, it not all their fault, but they create the delays, in EasyJets, defence it is not all their fault either, but they have done the planning to cope with the environment in which we operate, should they have forseen all of this? I couldn't comment on that, as I don't do the planning I simply drive the aircraft and for my part I will do that when it is safe to do so, but when I have worked my max and I have to stand down in the interests of safety I will do and that may cause delays or cancellations in the short term until we can get a more robust schedule and crew plan in place, and I honestly believe the new CEO is trying to achive that.