Status: 17.10.2022 01:12 a.m
At midnight another strike by pilots from the Lufthansa subsidiary Eurowings began. Only about 230 of the airline’s originally planned 400 flights are scheduled to take off today. The walkout is expected to lead to significant failures until Wednesday.
Eurowings pilots went on a three-day strike at midnight. The renewed industrial action began as planned, said a spokesman for the Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) pilots’ union. No further offer was submitted by the company.
The Lufthansa subsidiary assumes that despite the industrial action, more than 230 of the around 400 flights planned for Monday will take place. For Tuesday and Wednesday, Eurowings also expects to be able to carry out more than half of the planned flight program.
Effects on flight schedule expected by Wednesday
According to the airport, 102 of the 171 planned Eurowings flights were canceled for Monday at Düsseldorf Airport alone, 43 connections were canceled in Cologne/Bonn, and 40 take-offs and landings were canceled in Stuttgart. In Hamburg, 58 of 94 planned flights are said to be cancelled.
According to the company, Eurowings Europe is not on strike and is flying “at full capacity”. The airline Eurowings Discover, which operates from Frankfurt and Munich, is also not affected by the labor dispute by the Vereinigung Cockpit union (VC). For Tuesday and Wednesday, Eurowings assumes that almost half of the planned flight program will also be cancelled.
Union calls for longer rest periods
On Friday, the union had called on the pilots to go on a three-day strike in the wage dispute over better working hours – from 00:00 today to 23:59 on Wednesday. The offer submitted by the employer for the collective agreement is not negotiable, VC had explained. The talks failed again. The union is demanding longer rest periods and shorter deployments because the cockpit staff is overworked.
The management had described the demands as excessive. Eurowings Managing Director Kai Duve criticized on Saturday that the union was inevitably forcing Eurowings to shrink German flight operations and jeopardize jobs – not just in the cockpit.
Passengers should inform themselves via the website and app
The flight plans for Tuesday and Wednesday would be published as soon as it was clear how many pilots reported for flight duty despite the call for a strike, Eurowings explained. Passengers were asked to keep themselves informed about the status of their flight via the website or the Eurowings customer app.
The Eurowings pilots had already stopped work for a day at the beginning of October. The airline had to cancel around 250 flights – around 30,000 passengers were affected.