The pilots of the airline Eurowings go on strike with the demand for shorter flight hours and longer rest periods. Around half of the planned flights are canceled and tens of thousands of passengers remain on the ground. The airline has announced “largely normal flight operations” for Friday.
The pilots’ strike at the holiday airline Eurowings has led to numerous flight cancellations. The airline had to cancel almost half of its 500 planned flights with up to 30,000 passengers affected. On Friday, Eurowings expect “largely normal flight operations again,” said a spokesman. The pilots of the Lufthansa subsidiary complain about a high workload and went on strike for longer breaks, for example.
The walkout began at midnight, and Eurowings had to cancel the first flights early in the morning – so the connections from Cologne/Bonn to Rhodes and Mallorca were canceled. The strike was expected to last until midnight on Thursday. Only Eurowings Germany flights were affected by the strike, not Eurowings Europe flights. The long-haul subsidiary Eurowings Discover, which flies from Frankfurt and Munich, was also exempt. In addition, Eurowings was able to rely on the help of the parent company Lufthansa. Over 30,000 passengers – and thus more than half of the passengers booked for Thursday – would reach their destination with Eurowings, the airline said. It specializes in inexpensive direct flights within Europe.
The union Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) had called for the strike. She justified the walkout with the fact that in ten rounds of negotiations on the framework collective agreement, which has remained unchanged since 2015, no significant agreement was reached. The central requirement is therefore the relief of employees through shorter flight duty times and longer rest periods.
According to Eurowings, VC is calling for the maximum weekly working time to be reduced by five to 50 hours and 14 additional days off per year. Eurowings called the union’s demands “excessive in times when millions of people fear a cold winter and the next heating bill.” The company pointed to two upcoming salary increases of well over ten percent in the next four months. The implementation of the union’s demands “would make 20 percent of our flights impossible,” said the company spokesman. Both sides want to continue their collective bargaining. Appointments have been made, the spokesman said.
