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There is a pilot strike at Lufthansa, and despite the airline’s best efforts, it has had a huge impact on its operations. So far, the airline has confirmed that more than 420,000 passengers have been or will be affected by this pilot strike. The pilots say that they will remain on strike from Wednesday until Friday.
Lufthansa said that it will do its best to inform all of its passengers about changes made to its flight schedule. The German carrier said that it will notify passengers via email or text message. Any passengers who have flights booked with Lufthansa over the next few days will need to be on the lookout for new information regarding the availability of services.
Although Lufthansa’s passenger services will be in chaos, the airline said that its cargo service will be completely unaffected. Either way, this pilot strike on passenger flights is likely to set the airline back in the range of tens of millions of euros.
In a public statement, the airline said that this announcement of a pilot strike has already caused a lot of damage. This is because passengers have already had to re-book their flights. Some passengers, who could not afford to re-book at a later time have had to cancel their plans altogether or find a flight with another airline. The airline has done all it can to make arrangements with cargo airlines to help secure the transport of all goods.
The airline went on to add that, during this three-day walkout, there will be only around 500 short- and long-haul flights that will run. Also, despite the fact that the pilots union that is taking part in this strike represents pilots from a number of airlines, the other pilots will not take participate in the strike.
Lufthansa said that it is going to try to make adjustments wherever possible. For example, the airline is going to try to use larger planes on some routes to help get more passengers to their destinations. That being said, Lufthansa said that this will be the largest strike in the airline’s history. It is, however, the third strike that has taken place at Frankfurt Airport over the past six weeks.
The airline wants to start pilot negotiations as soon as possible. That being said, this will be the restart of negotiations. The last time the two parties met to talk about what the pilots want, the talks broke down. Chances are that both sides will not be able to reach an agreement anytime soon. If this is the case, there could be more pilot strikes in the near future, although there have been no talks yet of another strike. The union will likely announce more dates after these three days of strikes come to an end.
