Lufthansa cancels 140 flights on Friday

FRANKFURT, Germany -Deutsche Lufthansa AG said it would have to cancel about 140 flights Friday as a result of a strike over pay by pilots at its CityLine subsidiary.

By (AP)

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Published: Fri 8 Aug 2008, 3:19 PM

Last updated: Sun 5 Apr 2015, 11:51 AM

The Cockpit union started its 36-hour walkout at midnight (2200GMT) Wednesday and was scheduled to end it at noon (1000GMT).

Friday's cancelations followed the scrapping of some 360 flights on Thursday. CityLine operates on domestic German and European routes.

The company said it was doing everything it could to keep disruptions at a minimum for passengers, putting them onto other flights and on trains.

‘We're expecting that no passenger will be stuck,’ said Thomas Jachnow, a Lufthansa spokesman.

The strike follows a walkout last month by Cockpit at CityLine and another short-haul subsidiary, Eurowings, that forced Lufthansa to cancel about 1,000 flights.

Lufthansa CEO Wolfgang Mayrhuber has argued that strikes threaten the company's competitiveness and, therefore, jobs _ and has urged Cockpit to return to the negotiating table.

In an interview with the daily Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung published Friday, he maintained that the pilots already earn about 20 to 25 percent more than their counterparts at comparable regional airlines.

Separately, ground staff staged a five-day strike last week. That was resolved when Lufthansa and the ver.di service workers' union reached a pay deal a week ago; since then, the airline has been working to clear a maintenance backlog and get all its planes back in service.

Shares of Lufthansa were trading up 0.2 percent Friday at Ð15.48 (US$23.37) in Frankfurt.

On the Net:

http://www.lufthansa.com


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