Lufthansa Pilots Extend Strike to Third Day

German airline Lufthansa has announced the cancellation of 830 flights scheduled for Friday, November 25, as the Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) union has extended its strike until the weekend.

Lufthansa noted that, for “completely incomprehensible reasons”, the pilots’ union will strike on Friday between 00:01 and 23:59.

The airline said that over 100,000 passengers will be affected due to the cancellations of 830 short- and medium-haul flights.

On Friday, the third consecutive day of strikes, 2,170 of the Lufthansa Group’s approximately 3,000 scheduled flights will be operating as planned.

“Long-haul flights will be operating almost as scheduled, although there may be occasional cancellations of these flights resulting from the strikes on the previous days. In total, over 315,000 passengers have been affected by the cancellation of 2,618 flights”, Lufthansa said.

The Group airlines Eurowings, Germanwings, SWISS, Austrian Airlines, Air Dolomiti and Brussels Airlines are not affected by the strike.

The pilot union called Wednesday’s strike due to a long-running dispute with management over wages. Lufthansa’s pilots say they have gone without a pay rise for more than five years and are asking for an average annual increase of 3.7 percent.

Lufthansa is calling on the pilots’ union once more to develop a joint solution for the dispute through arbitration Harry Hohmeister, Chief Officer Hub Management of Deutsche Lufthansa AG.

“The status quo is that we pay our pilots significantly more than our competitors do. As members of the executive board, we are responsible for more than 120,000 employees and want to keep Lufthansa viable for the future”, Hohmeister said, adding that the union’s demand regarding pay increases is impossible to be met.

Lufthansa has requested for all its customers to check the status of their flight on LH.com before travelling to the airport and will also be notifying passengers of potential flight cancellations by e-mail or SMS. Customers can also call the airline’s free hotline at 0800 850 60 70 for information (free from German landlines).