Lufthansa strike: Airline grounds 800 flights as pilots stage 24-hour walkout

At least 800 flights have been grounded, affecting more than 130,000 passengers

Ground stop: Lufthansa aircraft at Frankfurt, the German airline’s main hub (Lufthansa)

Lufthansa has cancelled almost all its flights to and from its main hubs, Frankfurt and Munich, on Friday 2 September due to a sudden pilots’ strike.

At least 800 flights have been grounded by the German airline, with cancellations having started on Thursday.

The German pilots’ union, Vereinigung Cockpit (VC), has called a strike on Friday from 12.01am for 24 hours. The impact will last into the weekend, with long-haul flights to Germany affected until at least Sunday. Arrivals at Frankfurt from Cape Town, Johannesburg and Hong Kong will operate several hours late.

Lufthansa said the stoppage “will have a massive impact on flight operations – in the middle of the main return travel period at the end of the school holidays in Germany and other European countries”.

At least 130,000 passengers will be affected – many thousands of them British travellers. Normally Lufthansa operates dozens of flights each day between the UK and its hubs at Frankfurt and Munich.

All flights to and from London Heathrow – 18 serving Frankfurt, 16 serving Munich – are grounded on Friday, along with 10 services between Manchester and Germany.

Under European air passengers’ rights rules, travellers are entitled to be flown to their final destination as soon as possible. For example, a passenger booked to fly from Manchester via Frankfurt to New York has a right to be re-routed via Dublin, Paris, or Amsterdam.

Lufthansa says it is offering pilots a monthly increase of €900 (£775) on base pay, and accuses the pilots’ union of making demands that “would increase payroll costs by over 40 per cent”.

The airline’s labour director, Michael Niggemann, said: “We cannot understand VC’s call for a strike. The management has made a very good and socially balanced offer – despite the continuing burdens of the Covid crisis and uncertain prospects for the global economy.

“This escalation comes at the expense of many thousands of customers.”

Lufthansa says the union is demanding “more money, for example, for sick days, vacation or training”.

Matthias Baier, spokesman for VC, said: “Aware of our responsibility for companies and guests, we wanted to leave no stone unturned and offered another negotiation date despite an inadequate offer and failed negotiations.

“The negotiations have failed.

“Therefore, the only thing left for us to do is to enforce our demands with a labour dispute.”

Passengers whose domestic flights are cancelled can exchange their plane ticket to a Deutsche Bahn (German Railways) train ticket free of charge.

Eurowings and other sibling airlines of Lufthansa – Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Swiss – are unaffected.