- The service union Verdi has called on Lufthansa ground staff at seven German airports to go on a warning strike from early Tuesday morning.
- The company expects hundreds of flight cancellations and more than 100,000 passengers to be affected.
- The company canceled a number of connections at its most important hub in Frankfurt on Monday evening.
The announced warning strike has no major impact on Swiss flight operations, as the airline tells the Keystone-SDA news agency. For the time being, all connections planned for Tuesday remain in the flight program, according to Swiss. However, it cannot be completely ruled out that there could be delays or short-term flight cancellations during the course of the day, especially at Munich Airport.
Zurich Airport also does not expect any major restrictions. Only the four connections to Munich and Frankfurt offered by Lufthansa on Tuesday had already been canceled in advance. A total of four Lufthansa flights were canceled at Euroairport Basel-Mulhouse. The airport said the affected passengers had already been informed by the airline.
At Geneva airport, the strike will result in the cancellation of seven flights from Geneva to Munich and Frankfurt and six flights to Geneva, a spokesman for Genève Aéroport said. Lufthansa only has a market share of 1.6 percent at Geneva Airport, making it the tenth largest airline in Geneva.
Lufthansa special flight schedule
On Monday evening, Lufthansa employees in technology, logistics, freight and IT went on warning strike, as Verdi strike leader Marvin Reschinsky confirmed.
On Tuesday morning, ground staff followed Lufthansa at its Frankfurt/Main, Munich, Hamburg, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Cologne-Bonn and Stuttgart locations and stopped work. The strike began on Tuesday at 4 a.m. and is scheduled to end on Wednesday at 7:10 a.m., Verdi said.
Since all ground workers, from maintenance to passenger and aircraft handling, have been called on a warning strike, there will likely be major flight cancellations and delays, according to Verdi.
The background to the warning strike by Lufthansa ground staff is the group-wide collective wage negotiations for, according to Verdi, around 25,000 employees on the ground. Negotiations are scheduled to continue on Wednesday. Verdi described the second wave of warning strikes as necessary because Lufthansa had made no move to improve its existing offer in the previous negotiations.