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November 07, 2019A massive strike by flight personnel forced the Lufthansa airline to cancel 1,300 flights in two days for a total of 180,000 passengers. The strike, announced by the UFO union, started yesterday at 11.00 pm and will continue until 11.00 pm tomorrow.

The suspension of 700 flights is scheduled for today and another 600 cancellations, as Lufthansa communicates, are scheduled for tomorrow. In Frankfurt, the country's largest airport, a spokesman said, the situation is calm and passengers on canceled flights have already been informed that they are not going to the airport. Last Sunday, the UFO had already organized a strike in four Lufthansa subsidiaries, which led to the suppression of hundreds of flights. On that occasion the company had not been targeted.

Lufthansa had agreed a 2% wage increase, higher than that requested by the UFO. However, the union decided to continue with the unrest due to the "persistent refusal of Lufthansa to negotiate" on the other issues on the table. Carsten Spohr, the number one in Lufthansa, said in a statement that he was ready to mediate "in the interests of our customers and employees".

Lufthansa then announced that its subsidiaries (Eurowings, Germanwings, Sunexpress, Lufthansa Cityline, Swiss, Edelweiss, Austrian Airlines, Air Dolomiti and Brussels Airlines) were not affected by the strike. Ufo, in turn, reserves the right to extend future actions to branches. In order to offer other flight options to passengers affected by the strike, the company had mentioned the possibility of using larger aircraft on certain lines of its subsidiaries.

Lufthansa also offers its customers to book a flight with a group company immediately and free of charge within the next ten days. In addition, passengers on German domestic routes can use Deutsche Bahn even if their flights have been canceled. "We will do everything we can to minimize the impact for our customers who suffer from this massive strike," an air group spokesman said.