Airline cancels 800 flights due to pilot strike – affecting thousands of Brits

MORE than 800 flights are being cancelled tomorrow due to a pilot strike.

German airline Lufthansa has confirmed the flight cancellations, which will affect dozens of UK flights.

2

Around 7,000 passengers booked on UK flights will be disrupted.

All 34 of Lufthansa’s services connecting Heathrow with Frankfurt and Munich are grounded, in addition to 11 flights between Manchester and Germany.

Vereinigung Cockpit (VC), a trade union representing Lufthansa’s pilots, announced the walkout on Thursday in a row over pay.

Matthias Baier, a spokesman for the union, 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.

“We did not receive a sufficient offer today either. This is sobering and a missed opportunity. The negotiations have failed.

“The only thing left for us to do is to reinforce our demands with a labour dispute.”

Lufthansa said it has offered to raise pilots’ monthly base salaries by €900 (£777) and claimed the union’s demands would “would increase payroll costs by more than 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.”

It comes just days after Lufthansa confirmed a number of flights in their winter schedule will be cancelled until March 26 although wouldn’t confirm how many.

And they aren’t the only airline – SAS Scandinavian Airlines has announced it will axe up to 1,600 flights this autumn, across September and October.

Wizz Air confirmed that nearly all flights from Cardiff Airport will be cancelled for the next six months, citing “economic pressures”.

And British Airways confirmed 10,000 flights would be cancelled until March 2023.

Here is how to get compensation if your flight is delayed or cancelled.

2