Lufthansa Prepared For Pilots’ Strike

Lufthansa is advising that due to the strike announced by the pilots’ union Vereinigung Cockpit (VC), Lufthansa, Lufthansa Cargo and Germanwings have cancelled about 3,800 flights on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday — April 2 to April 4.

During the three day walkout of the cockpit crew, only about 500 Lufthansa short and long haul flights will be operated. The list of canceled flights is published on http://www.LH.com. Information for Germanwings passengers is available on http://www.germanwings.com.

The indicated that flight cancellations on such a massive scale will affect a total of 425,000 passengers. Lufthansa will inform all passengers who have registered their contact details in their booking or in their Miles & More profile about flight changes via text message and email.

Most of the remaining domestic and European flights will be flown by the sister companies, Eurowings and Lufthansa Cityline, whose pilots are not participating in the walkout.

In addition to Lufthansa Passenger Airlines, Lufthansa Cargo will also be affected. For the three strike days, 23 of 31 planned cargo flights from Frankfurt have already been cancelled.

The pilots of the sister companies, Swiss International Air Lines, Austrian Airlines, Eurowings, Lufthansa CityLine and Air Dolomiti, as well as the pilots of Brussels Airlines, will not participate in the strike. Where possible, these companies will use larger planes on routes from and to Germany in order to bring as many re-booked Lufthansa passengers as possible to their destinations.

Additionally, Lufthansa will re-book affected passengers on other airlines and will provide train tickets on domestic routes in cooperation with German Railways (Deutsche Bahn). Airline tickets can be exchanged for a train ticket at automated check-ins or on the Internet. Information on how to exchange Germanwings flight tickets for train tickets is available on http://www.germanwings.com/aktuell .

Commenting on the situation, Dr. Bettina Volkens, member of the executive board legal and personnel of the Lufthansa Group, said: “I greatly regret that the Vereinigung Cockpit is not prepared to settle this by negotiations and to find a solution without engaging in a labour dispute. We made good offers for an improved salary as well as a future provision for early leave from flight service.”

Dr. Volkens continued: “Based on this, it is difficult to understand that the VC union is calling for a three-day strike right away – both for our customers and the more than one hundred thousand colleagues of the other Lufthansa employee groups. We will do our best to care for our customers during the strike. I want to thank in advance all employees that will go above and beyond what is normal and give their best for our customers and for the company.”

Go to http://www.lufthansa.com/de/en/Travel-information for more.