Fifth day of strike grounds 100,000 Lufthansa passengers, with the number of cancelled flights expected to grow in the following days.
Fifth day of strike grounds 100,000 Lufthansa passengers, with the number of cancelled flights expected to grow in the following days.
Today, a total of 930 Lufthansa flights were cancelled as cabin crew, backed by an order court are pressuring the German airline and continuing with the longest strike in Lufthansa’s history. The 930 Lufthansa flights were departing from or arriving to Frankfurt, Duesseldorf and Munich, three of the largest hubs and airports in Germany. Fifth day of strike grounds 100,000 Lufthansa passengers in addition to another 300,000 passengers seeing their flights cancelled in the past four days.
Overall, the German airline was compelled to cancel 2,800 flights in the past four days. The cabin crew strike is a result of a dispute between the airline and the UFO flight attendants union. At the center of the dispute are cost cuts. The strike is expected to continue through Friday this week, amounting to a total of eight days.
The German airline sees the UFO strike as illegal. It has challenged the strike in court with no results. The court of Darmstadt decided that the industrial action is legal under German labor law and approved the continuation of the strike. The arguments brought forth by Lufthansa in the legal complaint are based on the fact that the reasons invoked by the UFO are vague and therefore cannot be met or stand as plausible for the ongoing strike.
The decision of the Darmstadt court was applauded by the union. As such, the cabin crew strike is set to continue through Friday in all three hubs: Duesseldorf, Munich and Frankfurt. Lufthansa is maintaining its position and will decided upon future actions.
Another court decision stated that on Tuesday the ongoing strike at the Duesseldorf airport was indeed illegal. However, with the decision coming too late and referring exclusively to Tuesday, there was little to count as a victory for the German airline.
At the heart of the problem the Union quotes a decision of the German airline to cut retirement provisions. The union doesn’t want these provisions out of the contract. On the other hand Lufthansa maintains that with increasing competition from low-cost airlines, the system currently in place is too expensive to be sustainable.
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