The German flag carrier Lufthansa has been compelled to cancel a total of 800 flights on Tuesday as the public sector workers started strike for more pay hence, disrupting major airports like Frankfurt.
The cancellation of 800 out of the 1600 scheduled flights will affect 90,000 passengers. Service would be back to normal on Wednesday after the strike, which will see groups like ground crew and airport firefighters walk off the job between 5:00 am and 6:00 pm local time (0300 to 1600 GMT), Lufthansa said.
Germany’s largest airport Frankfurt informed on its website of significant delays and flight cancellations affecting majority of the airlines.
Lufthansa instructed its passengers whose flights had not been cancelled to reach airports earlier.
The Tuesday “warning strike” will also hit Munich, Cologne and Bremen airports, as well as local transport, kindergartens, rubbish collection and hospitals in several states like capital Berlin, Bavaria or North Rhine-Westphalia.
Worker representatives at Verdi, teachers’ union GEW and civil servants’ federation DBB demand a 6 per cent pay raise or a pay increase of at least €200 (US$245.52) per month for the 2.3 million people working for Germany’s federal and local governments.
