Lufthansa Strike Raises Fears of Hundreds of Flight Cancellations

Pilots and cabin crew at German airline Lufthansa have gone on strike, and hundreds of flights are expected to be canceled.

Reuters reported on the 11th (local time) that departure boards at Frankfurt and Munich airports in Germany showed that dozens of flights, including long-haul connections, scheduled for Thursday the 12th had been canceled.

Bloomberg, citing the German Airports Association, also reported that more than 460 flights are expected to be canceled and that an estimated 69,000 passengers will be directly affected. Lufthansa told Bloomberg that it expects a "wide-ranging cancellation of flights," although it did not disclose specific figures.

The Lufthansa pilots' union announced that it would strike from 12:01 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. on the 12th, demanding that the company triple its contributions to the retirement pension plan. The pilots' union held seven rounds of talks with management over pension cost sharing, but after no progress was made, it voted in September last year to go on strike. The pilots' union has about 4,800 members, and the cabin crew union has about 20,000 members.

Michael Niggemann, Lufthansa's Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO), told reporters in Berlin that he was "very concerned about the escalation of this situation by the union," stressing that there is "absolutely no financial leeway" to meet the union's demands.

Lufthansa stated that it plans to minimize disruption by rebooking passengers on other airlines within the group, such as Austrian Airlines, Eurowings, and Swiss. Passengers can also exchange their flight tickets for itineraries using Deutsche Bahn, Germany's state-owned railway company.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.