Lufthansa pilots to strike again this week

Pilots at German airline Lufthansa will strike again this week, their union Cockpit said Tuesday, escalating a wage dispute.

The pilots for passenger flights will walk out from 12.01 am on Wednesday to 11.59pm on Thursday, while the industrial action for those operating cargo flights will last a day longer to 11.59pm on Friday.

The strike comes just a week after the airline was forced to cancel almost all its flights on Friday due to a pilots’ walk-out, affecting 130,000 passengers.

“Despite announcements to the contrary, Lufthansa has not yet approached us and has not put forward a new offer,” said Cockpit in a statement.

“This is absolutely incomprehensible and leads to a further unnecessary escalation of the situation.”

The pilot union is seeking a 5.5 per cent wage increase by the end of the year, along with automatic compensation for inflation and adjustments on its salary grid.

Lufthansa has said the entire package sought by Cockpit would raise pilot personnel costs by 40 per cent or 900 million euros ($900 million).

With inflation soaring, collective salary bargaining is expected to be tense in the coming months across Europe.

German consumer prices rose by 7.9 per cent in the year to August, according to data published last week by the federal statistics agency Destatis.