Germany’s Lufthansa Cancels Hundreds of Friday Flights Due To Strike

Frankfurt — German flagship airline Lufthansa is cancelling 800 flights scheduled for Friday due to planned strike action by pilots.

The cancellations announced by Lufthansa on Thursday represent almost all of the firm's flights out of the main hubs of Munich and Frankfurt, and are expected to affect some 130,000 people.

The Vereinigung Cockpit union confirmed overnight that Lufthansa pilots would stage an all-day strike on Friday both for flights by the core passenger business and its cargo subsidiary.

Negotiations on a new wage deal failed to produce a result after a round of exploratory talks, an improved offer from the company last week and a final attempt at talks on Wednesday.

Lufthansa bosses needed to make "a significantly improved offer," said union negotiator Marcel Gröls.

The cancellations are expected to hit many families returning from summer holidays in Germany, and could lead to further problems on Saturday and Sunday.

Eurowings and Eurowings Discover flights won't be affected, and neither will Lufthansa flights starting from foreign destinations where the crew and plane are already abroad.

The union is seeking salary increases of 5.5% this year and automatic increases linked to inflation from next year.

The requested pay rises would mean that pilots starting out would receive some €81,000 ($81,050) per year, and an experienced pilot at the end of their career would be on about €289,000. There are also background tensions over the Lufthansa group's future strategy.

Vereinigung Cockpit had previously been promised that a number of its aircraft could only be flown by some 5,000 captains and first officers covered by a collective bargaining agreement. But during the coronavirus crisis, Lufthansa terminated the agreement and started to set up a new airline with lower pay scale conditions, bypassing the collective deal.

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