With a day-long strike, Lufthansa pilots want to paralyze their company’s flight operations this Friday. They stopped work just after midnight. After the strike was announced, the airline canceled almost the entire program of the core company. Around 130,000 passengers are affected by more than 800 flights that are canceled at the Frankfurt and Munich hubs.
The passengers were asked not to come to the airports, but to switch to the train or flights on another day. You are entitled to refunds and possibly compensation payments in the event of cancellations or serious delays.
According to the Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) union, only the departures of the Lufthansa core company and Lufthansa Cargo from German airports are on strike. The subsidiaries Lufthansa Cityline, Eurowings and Eurowings Discover are not affected by the industrial action and are scheduled to fly. The same applies to foreign Lufthansa subsidiaries such as Swiss, Austrian or Brussels. Lufthansa flights from non-German airports also take place if aircraft and crews are already abroad. The union had called the strike on Thursday night after collective bargaining with Lufthansa had failed.
The flight attendants want to negotiate in the fall
Lufthansa criticizes the call for a strike and has asked VC to return to the negotiating table. According to the company, the demands of VC would increase personnel costs in the cockpit by 40 percent. This is beyond reasonable, even without considering the financial consequences of the Corona crisis. Most recently, the group offered an increase in the monthly basic salary by a flat rate of 900 euros. Based on a period of 18 months, Lufthansa announced that this would result in growth of 18 percent for young professionals and five percent for captains in the final stage.
In addition to 5.5 percent more money this year, the VC had demanded an automated compensation for inflation from 2023. There would also be a new salary table and more money for sick days, holidays and training. Over a period of two years, that would mean an additional burden of 900 million euros, Lufthansa said.
It was only in July that the Verdi union almost paralyzed the flight operations of Germany’s largest airline for a whole day with a warning strike by ground staff. More than 1,000 flights were canceled and around 134,000 passengers had to change their travel plans. In the subsequent round of negotiations, the union achieved salary increases for the approximately 20,000 employees on the ground, which were well into the double digits, especially in the lower wage brackets. The flight attendants’ union Ufo wants to negotiate for its members in the fall. It declared its “express and unreserved solidarity” with the pilots’ strike.