The UFO flight attendants’ union said Sunday that talks with the airline over disputed retirement rules collapsed, triggering the resumption of strikes that started Friday.
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UFO, which is in a long-running dispute over retirement benefits with the German airline, is planning further strikes at other airports throughout the week. The longest previous set of walkouts by flight attendants at Lufthansa was three days of stoppages in late August and early September 2012.
The UFO union plans to strike until next Friday, which would make it the longest walkout in the airline’s 60-year history. Exceptions are a few flights between Munich and Frankfurt to London Heathrow, Dublin, Ashgabat, Delhi, Hongkong and Tokyo.
Lufthansa said in the travel information that it will do its best to keep the effects of the strike to a minimum and inform the passengers as soon as possible.
“Employees seem to be angry, and the union seems well-organized, making it very hard for Lufthansa to mitigate the strike impact”, Jochen Rothenbacher, a Frankfurt-based analyst at Equinet AG, said by phone.
In Frankfurt and Duesseldorf, flight attendants are to stop working from 4:30 a.m. (0330 GMT) local time to 11:00 p.m. (2200 GMT).
Not affected by the strike are Lufthansa’s subsidiaries Germanwings, Eurowings, Lufthansa CityLine, SWISS, Austrian Airlines, Air Dolomiti and Brussels Airlines. The airline made an improved proposal on Monday evening, an overall offer to improve pay by 6 percent to try and end the strike, but so far the two sides can not reach an agreement on pay or pension. Labor leaders have vowed to call strikes until November 13.
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The airline is trying to trim costs, as it faces more competition from low cost carriers. UFO representatives noted today that the airline recently increased its pre-tax earnings forecast for the year.
