German flag carrier Lufthansa is planning to offer a number of additional flights on domestic and international routes on Friday to offset the fallout from planned cabin crew strikes, reported dpa.
Lufthansa also plans to deploy larger planes on some routes to make up for cancellations, the airline said on Thursday.
Lufthansa cabin crew plan to stage a one-day strike on Friday, in a step likely to cause significant delays for passengers nationwide.
The walkout comes amid deadlocked negotiations over the airline's collective wage agreement as well as plans to transfer operations of subsidiary CityLine into a new company called Lufthansa City Airlines, with 800 jobs believed to be at stake.
Lufthansa cabin crew and pilots last went on strike in March, leading to hundreds of cancellations across Germany.
The latest stoppage is set to begin at 0:01 am on Friday (2201 GMT on Thursday) and run until 10 pm, with all departures from Frankfurt and Munich to be affected, according to the UFO union.
Some flights originally to depart from Frankfurt on Friday morning have already been cancelled.
The strike will also affect flights operated by CityLine from Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg, Bremen, Stuttgart, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Berlin and Hanover airports.
Lufthansa executive board member Michael Niggemann slammed the strike action as "irresponsible," noting that the airline was currently struggling with flight disruptions and fuel price hikes caused by the war in the Middle East.
The strikes are also set to cause disruption for travellers returning from holidays, said Niggemann, who is responsible for human resources, as a two-week Easter break comes to an end in many regions.
In a ballot held at the end of March, cabin crew at Lufthansa and its regional subsidiary Cityline voted by a large majority for industrial action.
- Lufthansa
- Extra flights
- Strike
Source: www.dailyfinland.fi
