German airline Lufthansa cancelled 290 flights on Friday, grounding 37,500 passengers, as cabin staff began a week-long blitz of walkouts in a long-running battle over savings aimed at fending off competition from low-cost rivals.
Of the cancelled flights, 23 were inter-continental services, Lufthansa said in a statement.
The flight attendants’ union UFO initial stoppage began at 1300 GMT on Friday and affected flights to and from the airports of Frankfurt and Duesseldorf. The union also announced a second, much-longer walkout on Saturday to turn the heat up on management. On Saturday’s stoppage would also hit Frankfurt and Duesseldorf and would begin at 0500 GMT and last until 2200 GMT, UFO said.
“We regret that is has come to this escalation, but negotiations (with management) have reached a point where there is no alternative but to strike,” it said. The group’s subsidiaries Germanwings, Eurowings, Lufthansa CityLine, SWISS, Austrian Airlines, Air Dolomiti and Brussels Airlines are not being targeted by the industrial action. Lufthansa said it “regretted” the union’s action and apologised to passengers, saying the short notice of the strikes made it difficult to inform them in time.