By Tarek Salame
On July 2. KLM made a last-minute wage proposal to its ground staff, hoping to avert an 8-hour strike scheduled for July 9th. This is right as the Dutch school holidays begin, and for many, it looked like a compromise; for workers, it was like deja vu. This isn’t KLM’s first standoff, and it likely won’t be the last, not in Europe’s current climate. The 2025 summer travel season is already showing signs of familiar stress, with flight cancellations being crucial and shortages arising due to disputes.
However, what’s different now is that these conflicts are built in, as KLM attempts to hold its network together with bonuses and conditions. A larger question is forming in Europe: has the European airline model reached its breaking point? Let’s examine what’s fueling the strike, why KLM’s offer is insufficient, and how it relates to a deeper strain on flying across European airports this summer.
The breakdown at KLM
On July 2, KLM delivered a wage offer to the ground crew in a final bid to avert an 8-hour strike planned for July 9.
This proposal included a one-off 1,000 bonus this year and a possible 2.5% pay raise by July 2026.
However, it comes with a catch, as it depends on KLM’s 2025 performance.
The union CNV did not like this. Their negotiator, Souleiman Amallah, said that the deal was too conditional and insisted that KLM had not quite understood the demand. And with that proposal, the strike threat remains alive, posing a potential choke point for a summer already defined by travel stress.
Just across the border in France, the air traffic controller staged a two-day strike starting on July 3, resulting in approximately 1,500 cancelled flights and affecting up to 300,000 passengers.
Ryanair alone grounded 170 flights, citing French overflight disruptions.
These aren’t random pockets of unrest; they’re part of a perfect storm brewing across Europe’s travel networks.
What makes this summer different is that the pattern is not a surprise, as KLM had already sought a court injunction in June to block the strike.
Their reasoning cited security concerns linked to the NATO summit and won. This week, CNV says that the legal path is likely closed, and with few excuses remaining for intervention before the July 9th stoppage.
What KLM workers want
Officially, KLM states that it values its ground crews. It’s offering a one-time payment of €1,000 in 2025, plus a conditional 2.5% pay raise by July 2026, but that depends on profitability.
What workers want is simple: clarity and a raise that doesn’t disappear when the balance sheet dips. CNV’s negotiators have made it clear that they want:
They want guaranteed structural pay increases, not bonuses tied to financial outcomes they can’t control.
They want shorter, more sustainable shifts during the peak summer months.
And they want recognition, not just in statements, but in payslips.
This is a pattern that we’re seeing with staffing shortfalls, high turnover, and unpredictable rosters, which have turned what was once a steady airport job into something far less reliable.
Meanwhile, KLM faces its own pressures as part of the Air France-KLM Group, which is expanding its European footprint, including a 60.5% stake in SAS, a Scandinavian airline.
With that kind of growth comes more questions about whether the group can invest in Acquisitions, why can’t it invest in its own Frontline staff?
July and August, as well as any major strike during this period, will risk delays, rebookings, and reputational damage.
The core tension here is not financial, but emotional. Workers do not trust the conditional language, and KLM doesn’t want to lock in costs without knowing what autumn will bring.
However, something needs to give, as both sides are waiting for the other to blink, while passengers are the ones caught in the middle.
The summer strikes
Airlines have cut staff, only to fly at full capacity. The government has promised reforms, but has backtracked with the EU despite running one of the largest single markets, which still has no common protocol for resolving labour disputes across the borders.
So, when the French air traffic controllers walk out, their Spanish counterparts, there’s no shared mechanism, only the local flare-ups that ripple continent-wide.
When those flare-ups happened during the summer, the airlines reached for legal levers.
In this case, the NATO summit in June was to block a strike through the courts, arguing it posed a national security risk.
That excuse no longer applies — there’s no summit in sight, the same workers are walking out anyway, only with more frustration.
It’s becoming a pattern that’s increasingly hard to ignore, as the strikes are no longer an emergency; they’re becoming an outlet where workers cannot safely report stress or negotiate workload caps, which eventually produces only one outcome: a complete stoppage.
In this light, the summer’s disruptions aren’t a failure of labour. They’re a failure of planning and policy. One that’s now playing out in real time, departure by departure.
What passengers are noticing
Across Europe, passengers aren’t just frustrated. They’re recalibrating.
At Schiphol, travellers have started arriving five hours early — not to play it safe, but because they’ve heard the queues can turn dangerous.
In Nice, a family of four was rebooked through three countries after their original flight was cancelled during the ATC strikes on July 3. On Reddit and TikTok, entire threads are dedicated to “delay survival kits” for flying in 2025.
And yet, the response from airlines and governments often lags behind.
There’s no continent-wide passenger protection standard that accounts for labour disputes.
There’s little transparency around how airlines prioritise rebooking or allocate compensation.
And while airlines invoke “exceptional circumstances” to avoid paying out, workers are punished for raising the alarms that could prevent breakdowns in the first place.
The tips for travellers who are already flying in 2025, fly earlier in the week, avoid peak hours, and choose trains whenever possible. But if this is the summer of future mobility, then stop-gap solutions won’t cut it.
Europe’s airports need more than an apology email. They need breathing room and a plan to sustain some of the 2025 disruptions. Once you zoom out, Europe faces the same choice: a continent that depends on frictionless movement for tourism, trade, and cultural identity.
However, if flying becomes a gamble every summer, that friction will return quickly, and people will seek alternatives or simply stop travelling. This isn’t the end of European travel, but it is the end of taking it for granted.