Lufthansa has cancelled almost 900 flights after it lost an eleventh-hour legal bid to halt a pilots\u2019 strike.<\/p>\n
The two-day action over pay began at midnight local time and about 100,000 passengers are expected to be affected.<\/p>\n
Joerg Handwerg, spokesman for the pilots\u2019 union, Vereinigung Cockpit, said: \u201cLet me make it very clear that going on strike gives us no pleasure.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are sorry for the passengers and we cannot understand why Lufthansa is unable to make a negotiable offer.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cWe are ready at any time to return to the negotiating table. We can of course call off the strikes at any time but Lufthansa must show a willingness to budge.\u201d<\/p>\n
Flights by Lufthansa\u2019s other airlines including Eurowings, Swiss, Austrian Airlines, and Brussels Airlines are not affected, the airline said.<\/p>\n
The industrial action is part of a long-running pay dispute at Lufthansa, with the union having organised 14 strikes since April 2014.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Lufthansa made two legal challenges to halt the strike.<\/p>\n
A Frankfurt labour court first rejected Lufthansa\u2019s application for an injunction. Later in the evening, the Hesse state labour court rejected the airline\u2019s appeal.<\/p>\n
Pay talks between the Vereinigung union and the German airline broke down earlier this month and Lufthansa said the union had \u201cconsistently rejected the offer\u201d of mediation.<\/p>\n
The union is calling for a 3.7 percent pay rise for 5,400 pilots dating back to 2012.<\/p>\n
Lufthansa, which is facing increasing competition from budget rivals, offered a 2.5 percent increase over the six years until 2019.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a separate dispute with cabin crew at Lufthansa\u2019s low-cost subsidiary, Eurowings, led it to cancel more than 60 flights on Tuesday.\u2014 BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lufthansa has cancelled almost 900 flights after it lost an eleventh-hour legal bid to halt a pilots\u2019 strike. The two-day action over pay began at midnight local time and about 100,000 passengers are expected to be affected. Joerg Handwerg, spokesman for the pilots\u2019 union, Vereinigung Cockpit, said: \u201cLet me make it very clear that going […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":36172,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36168"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36174,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36168\/revisions\/36174"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}