Hungarian flights also affected by the Lufthansa strike on Friday

German airline Lufthansa pilots have announced a strike on Friday. Hundreds of flights have been cancelled due to the walkout. Among the flights affected are flights to Budapest.

Lufthansa strike

The Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) union representing German Lufthansa pilots has called a strike on Friday 2 September. The union announced that the strike would last all day. The strike will not only affect the Lufthansa Group’s eponymous passenger airline, but also all departing flights of its cargo subsidiary Lufthansa Cargo.

The Vereinigung Cockpit union is demanding a 5.5 percent pay rise for 2022 and an automatic inflation-linked increase from 2023. The demand concerns around 5,000 pilots. The pilots include captains and first officers. The employer said the demand was unmet, napi.hu reports.

The union’s demand would increase cockpit crew salaries by more than 40 percent over the next two years, from EUR 2.2 billion to roughly EUR 3.1 billion.  According to Luthansa’s statement, this is “exaggerated even without taking into account the financial consequences of the Corona virus crisis”.

According to Lufthansa, a very favourable offer was made to the VC despite the many difficulties. This would involve a basic salary increase of €900 in two stages over a year and a half. This represents an 18 percent increase for career first officers and a 5 percent increase for pilots in the highest pay category.

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Several flight cancellations

Lufthansa has cancelled almost all its Friday flights from its two main bases due to the strike. Nearly 800 flights from Frankfurt and Munich are affected. The cancellations affect 130,000 passengers.

Flights from Frankfurt to Budapest and Munich to Budapest are also cancelled.

The VC represents the interests of pilots, flight engineers and flight instructors working for commercial airlines in Germany. It covers around 10,000 people. The last strike at Lufthansa was in 2017, index.hu reports.

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Source: index.hu, napi.hu