If you’ve got tickets to fly with Lufthansa on Wednesday, well, you might be facing a kink in your travel plans: the airline has canceled 876 flights amidst a 24-hour pilots’ strike.
This is the 14th strike pilots for the German carrier have gone on amid a long-running pay dispute, Reuters reports, and this time around, it will affect about 100,000 passengers flying out of German airports.
Union Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) says the strike will start at midnight and run for 14 hours, affecting Lufthansa flights departing from German airports. Other carriers under the company umbrella like Germanwings, Eurowings Austrian Airlines, SWISS and Brussels Airlines, won’t be affected by the strike Lufthansa said.
Talks about pay between the two sides fell to pieces this month, while the groups try to come to terms on contracts dating back to 212. The union wants an average 3.7% pay increase for 5,400 pilots over a five-year period.
But Lufthansa is trying to save money in the face of increase competition from other low-cost carriers, and has only put a 2.5% increase on the table.
The airline says it took note of the union’s announcement and regrets any inconvenience the strike may cause for passengers.
“This call for strike is not the right way,” Lufthansa said in a statement.
Again, this is just one of many Lufthansa strikes that has caused headaches for travelers in recent years: last November, a Lufthansa crew strike canceled 290 flights and disrupted plans for about 37,000 travelers. And in September of last year, Lufthansa was forced to scrap almost 1,000 flights as part of another pilots’ strike.
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist