News

Union escalates Lufthansa strike action

6 Sep 2012 by BusinessTraveller

Lufthansa customers are set to face further disruption on Friday as the airline’s cabin crew union steps up its industrial action.

The UFO union, which is in dispute with Lufthansa over pay and conditions, is planning to hold a nationwide 24-hour strike throughout Friday starting at 0000 local time.

It will be the third day of action by the union, which represents 18,000 of Lufthansa’s cabin crew, and is on a much wider scale than its first two days of stoppages last Friday (August 31) and Tuesday (September 4).

Lufthansa said that it would have to cancel a “majority of flights” because of the strike and added that there were likely to be further “unscheduled cancellations and delays”.

“Lufthansa regrets any inconvenience to its passengers caused by the strike measures and will do its utmost best to minimise the impact,” said the airline.

“Passenger support and service have paramount priority. Whenever possible, Lufthansa passengers, who have registered their contact details in their customer profile, will be informed via SMS or email about delays, cancellations and rebookings.”

Friday’s strike is the first time that UFO is planning to take action across Germany. The first strike on August 31 was just at Frankfurt while the second on Tuesday was at Frankfurt, Berlin-Tegel and Munich.

The company said that flights with Lufthansa Regional and other sister carriers such as Austrian Airlines, City Line, Germanwings and Swiss would not be affected by the industrial action.

The union has called on Lufthansa to start a mediation process which would it said would stop the strikes.

“Lufthansa requires us to take a huge pay cut and will simultaneously destroy our compensation structures,” said the union in a statement.

For the latest details on affected flights, click here, or visit lufthansa.com.

Report by Rob Gill

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