After more than two days of strike, Lufthansa ground staff ended their strike this morning. Nevertheless, the airline is still warning of possible failures today.
Lufthansa ground staff have ended their two-day warning strike. An airline spokesman said the employees returned to work at the start of their shift at 7:10 a.m. However, there could still be delays and cancellations today.
Operations should be gradually ramped up again throughout the day, Lufthansa explained. In the morning, several connections were still canceled at the airports in Frankfurt and Munich, as the dpa news agency reported. The airline advised passengers to regularly check the status of their planned flight via the website or app even after the strike ends.
Hundreds of thousands Passengers affected
The ver.di union had called on around 25,000 ground staff to take part in the strike. The strike began at 4 a.m. on Thursday. According to Lufthansa, only ten to 20 percent of the planned flights could be offered over the past two days. Hundreds of thousands of travelers were affected by the outages.
In addition, security staff at Frankfurt, Hamburg and Düsseldorf airports also stopped work on Thursday. As a result, all departures in Frankfurt and Hamburg had to be canceled that day. Only transfers in the transit area were possible.
There is a threat of further strikes
The next negotiations in the collective bargaining dispute at Lufthansa are scheduled to take place on March 13th and 14th. Ver.di is demanding, among other things, 12.5 percent more salary for ground staff, but at least 500 euros per month for a term of twelve months. Lufthansa has so far offered ten percent higher salaries for a 28-month contract.
Passengers must also expect strikes from another professional group in the near future. A few weeks before the start of the Easter holidays, the flight attendants of Lufthansa and its regional subsidiary Lufthansa Cityline voted for strikes in a strike vote by the UFO union on Wednesday.