Many flights were cancelled on Thursday due to a full-day strike by Lufthansa Group-owned German airline “Eurowings,” forcing tens of thousands of customers to find alternative flights, use trains, or postpone their trips.
A spokesman for “Eurowings” said that the company anticipates being able to transport more than 300,000 passengers to their destinations even on the strike day, noting that this number is equivalent to more than half of the number of passengers who booked flights with the company. According to the company’s data, more than half of all flights have been cancelled.
It is noteworthy that “Eurowings” typically runs 500 flights per month to locations around Germany and Europe.
More than half of the business’s scheduled flights were still completed despite the strike, primarily because the firm employed partner company jets to complete some of the flights and the strike did not affect the aircraft of its Austrian subsidiary, Eurowings Europe.
Following the failure of discussions for a basic salary agreement, the German pilots’ union Cockpit called for a strike by the pilots of Eurowings. The strike movement had a particularly negative impact on German airports.
Previous statistics showed that the number of cancelled flights at Dusseldorf Airport, the major headquarters for Eurowings, alone reached 118, while 61 of the 90 scheduled flights at Cologne/Bonn Airport, 72 at Hamburg Airport, and 54 in Stuttgart were also cancelled.
The airports concurred that Eurowings’ prompt communication of passengers avoided issues at the airports.
= On Thursday, Eurowings airline pilots went on a full-day strike to demand more time for rest and less time for work.
A spokeswoman for the German pilots’ organisation, Cockpit, confirmed that the strike has started as scheduled.
The German airline Lufthansa subsidiary Eurowings anticipates cancelling approximately half of its flights.
The airline added that passengers whose flights have been cancelled due to the strike will be advised of alternate transportation alternatives by midday at the latest. Eurowings said it will try to lessen the impact of the strike on travellers.
The airline announced on Wednesday that the strike would only affect its German flights and not its European operations.
On Tuesday, the German Pilots’ Union said that negotiations for a collective labour agreement at the low-cost carrier had broken down.
The union said, “10 rounds of negotiations did not result in a meaningful improvement, and two of these rounds gave obvious signs about voting for a strike.
Last month, the Cockpit union and Lufthansa resolved a protracted disagreement by significantly increasing pilots’ pay.
Despite twice scheduled compensation rises of more than 10% over the next four months, the union is requesting an additional 14 vacation days per year and reducing the maximum number of hours that can be worked each week, according to Kay Duffy, chief of staff at Eurowings.
Germany: Due to a pilots’ strike, Eurowings cancels more than half of today’s flights
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