180,000 passengers are stranded across Europe and the world as the German flag carrier Lufthansa battles strike action. The strike started at midnight last night is expected to last until the same time on Saturday with the union that represents the flight attendants stating the strike is due to unsatisfactory pay and working conditions with the airline unwilling to recognise the union let alone negotiate with them.
Passengers all across Europe and most aren’t even get onto the Lufthansa website to either convert their flights for a train ticket if travelling within Germany or rebook with the airline if flights are booked anywhere outside the western European country. Over half of the flights operated by the airline daily will be cancelled however only flights operated by Lufthansa itself will be affected, not it’s subsidiaries.
What’s interesting to me is Lufthansa’s profits are high, the group recorded an AU$2.2 billion profit in 2018 and compared to most other airlines they are swimming in it which makes me question why they aren’t at least negotiating. A last-minute legal bid by the airline to try and stop the strike failed and after looking at the Munich departures bored you truly can’t imagine what it’s like on the ground over there.
The strike will end on Saturday and a large backlog of passengers is expected. It seems as though it’s going to be a long 48 hours for the aircraft…
A rare sight currently, one of Lufthansa’s A380 lifts off from Munich full photo credit