Nothing worked anymore at the home bases of Deutsche Lufthansa.

The all-day strike by 5,000 pilots on Friday paralyzed almost all flight operations at Europe's largest airline group.

The company had already canceled more than 800 flights at the Frankfurt and Munich hubs with 130,000 affected passengers on Thursday in order to avoid chaos on site.

Long queues of passengers were therefore to be found in front of the counters for rebooking.

Otherwise, many vacationers and business travelers switched to train travel at short notice.

Ulrich Friese

Editor in Business.

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On the other hand, smaller airports such as Stuttgart, Cologne/Bonn or Hamburg, which are mostly served by the subsidiary Eurowings, were hardly affected by the strike action called for by the branch union Vereinigung Cockpit (VC).

In addition, flights by Lufthansa Cityline, which was not on strike, and long-haul flights to Germany from abroad took place as scheduled.

The same applies to the foreign Lufthansa subsidiaries such as Swiss, Austrian or Brussels.

"We are working flat out to ensure that our flight operations run completely at the weekend," said a Lufthansa spokesman on Friday.

A quick return to normal operations is also necessary, because increased travel is to be expected this weekend because the summer holidays in Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland are ending.

According to the group, the strike on Friday alone should have a negative impact with a loss of business of around 30 million euros.

This amount also includes compensation for flight cancellations.

In the event of cancellations or serious delays of three hours or more, passengers are entitled to reimbursements and possibly also compensation payments of up to 600 euros.

According to the flight portal Flightright, the strike is not an extraordinary circumstance outside Lufthansa's sphere of influence.

Those familiar with the industry consider it unlikely that the first pilots' strike this year is the prelude to a series of further labor disputes at VC.

"The lack of public understanding and the insufficient backing of the pilots of the other Lufthansa companies speak against a continuation of such walkouts," says one of them.

The VC, in which most pilots from Lufthansa and Lufthansa Cargo are represented, had declared the walkout after the recent collective bargaining with management failed.

The union called for 5.5 percent more salary this year and an automated compensation above the inflation of 2023.

Lufthansa calculates that the costs for the cockpit staff would then increase by 40 percent.

Based on a term of 18 months, the group would face an additional burden of EUR 900 million.

The growth for young co-pilots is an impressive 18 percent, while the increase for the best-paid flight captains is still 5 percent.

In addition to the demand for more salary, the striking pilots are also concerned with having a direct influence on the fleet policy of the core Lufthansa brand.

Years ago, VC had the exact number of 325 aircraft guaranteed, which could only be flown by the approximately 5,000 captains and first officers, in order to secure their collective agreement.

However, under the impression of the Corona crisis, Lufthansa boss Carsten Spohr had terminated the agreement with VC and started to set up a new flight operation (AOC) with lower tariff conditions instead.

The new airline "Cityline 2.0" is to take over numerous flights from the previous core company in European traffic.