After pilots declared a strike, German airline operator Lufthansa announced on Friday that it is cancelling “nearly all” of its flights to and from its main German hubs in Munich and Frankfurt.
According to a statement released by Lufthansa on Thursday, the airline will cancel 800 flights on September 2, affecting “130,000 passengers.”
After pay negotiations with the German airline broke down, pilots launched the strike that will affect Lufthansa Cargo and the passenger airline.
On Friday, the strike will start at 00:01 and go until 23:59.
According to Lnufthansa, the change in the flight schedule may result in more “individual cancellations or delays on Saturday and Sunday.”
The airline firm expressed sadness over the union’s choice, noting that it had made a “quite good offer” to increase the pilots’ base pay by 900 euros ($902) each month.
By the end of the year, the pilot union Cockpit wants a 5.5 percent pay raise, automatic compensation for inflation, and a change to its salary grid.
According to Lufthansa, the full union-requested package would result in a 40%, or 900 million euro, increase in the cost of pilot staff.
However, the union warned that the airline must “make a much improved offer” in order to avoid labor issues.
“We are too far away right now. We now want a durable solution for the compensation structure in all occupational categories, in addition to compensating for the loss of actual wages “said Marcel Groels, the mediator for Cockpit.
Collective wage negotiations are anticipated to be heated in the upcoming months across Europe due to the rising inflation rate.
According to information released on Tuesday by the federal statistics agency Destatis, consumer prices in Germany increased by 7.9 percent in the year ending in August.