PARIS (Reuters) -Most&nbsp;trains&nbsp;will be&nbsp;cancelled&nbsp;in&nbsp;France&nbsp;on&nbsp;Thursday, with&nbsp;flights&nbsp;also affected and Paris' subway heavily disrupted, as part of a nationwide&nbsp;strike&nbsp;against&nbsp;the government's plan to make people work longer before they can retire.
Opinion polls show a vast majority of French oppose the planned&nbsp;reform, which would see the retirement age pushed from 62 to 64, and&nbsp;Thursday&nbsp;will be a test of whether this can transform into a major headache for the government.
Unions have called workers to massively walk out of their job on Jan. 19 and take to the streets across&nbsp;France. The government has said it will stand its ground and called on workers not to paralyse the country.
Only one in three to one in five high-speed TGV lines will be operating, and only one in ten local TER&nbsp;trains, the SNCF train operator said.
International traffic on the Eurostar and Thalys lines is set to be nearly normal, while the Lyria connection with Switzerland will be heavily disrupted and other international train connections will be entirely&nbsp;cancelled.
In Paris, the vast majority of RER commuter&nbsp;trains&nbsp;will be&nbsp;cancelled, while three metro lines will be entirely shut down and many others will be disrupted, the RATP metro operator said.
Meanwhile, one in five&nbsp;flights&nbsp;to and from Paris' Orly airport are set to be&nbsp;cancelled.
The airport south of Paris, the city's second-largest, at this stage is the only one in the country where the&nbsp;strikes could lead to disruptions, a spokesperson for the DGAC aviation regulator said.
Seven out of 10 teachers will be on&nbsp;strike&nbsp;in primary schools, the leading union SNUipp-FSU said on Tuesday, while other sectors, from refineries to banks, are also set to be on&nbsp;strike.
France&nbsp;has a decades-long history of attempts to&nbsp;reform&nbsp;its&nbsp;pension&nbsp;system - one of the most generous and costly in Europe - and of protests to try to stop them.
That worked in 1995, when millions took to the street in what were the country's most disruptive social protests since May 1968. But several other&nbsp;pension&nbsp;reforms have gone through since despite protests.
The legal retirement age will gradually increase to 64 from 62, while the number of years of contributions needed for a full&nbsp;pension&nbsp;will rise faster than previously planned and will be set at 43 years from 2027, according to the government's plans.
The&nbsp;reform&nbsp;is yet to be adopted in parliament, where President Emmanuel Macron does not have an absolute majority but is hoping to get the votes of the conservative Les Republicains.
(Reporting by Tassilo Hummel and GV De Clercq; Writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

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Trains, flights cancelled in France on Thursday in strike against pension reform