Germany’s flagship
carrier Lufthansa said it would cancel nearly 900 flights on Wednesday because
of a strike by pilots, causing travel disruptions for tens of thousands of
passengers in the latest escalation of a long-simmering pay dispute.
The 24-hour stoppage, called by the pilots’
union Vereinigung Cockpit, will start at midnight and affect Lufthansa flights
at airports across Germany.
Out of the roughly 3,000 planned short- and
long-haul flights, 876 will be cancelled due to the strike, “affecting some
100,000 passengers”, Lufthansa said in a statement Tuesday.
It will be the union’s 14th strike since April
2014.
Meanwhile a separate
walkout by cabin crew at Lufthansa’s low-cost airline Eurowings led to the
cancellation of more than 60 flights at airports in Hamburg and Duesseldorf on
Tuesday.
The industrial action was called by Germany’s
biggest services union Verdi in a row over pay and working conditions.
The stoppage began at 0400 GMT and was due to
end at 1900 GMT.
The Lufthansa pilots going on strike Wednesday
are demanding a pay rise of an average of 3.66 percent per year, retroactive
for the past five years.
The union says pilots have endured a wage
freeze over that time and suffered a “significant loss of purchasing power” due
to inflation, while Lufthansa has made billions in profits.
It had offered a 2.5 percent wage hike.
-AFP
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