Lufthansa Airlines passengers with booked flights will need to change their itinerary as the company's pilots have started their three day strike to express their views about modifications to pilots pensions, and retirement benefit agreements Bloomberg Businessweek reported.
"Lufthansa can't afford to be left behind in cutting expenses if they want to remain in the top tier," said John Strickland, director of JLS Consulting Ltd. located in London. "The Gulf carriers already have lower costs and IAG has got its act together, with BA in clear profit and optimism about Iberia."
According to Bloomberg Businessweek, Lufthansa is suggesting customers obtain a seat on another flight or purchase a ticket on a train due to the 3,315 flights that have been canceled. This leaves 500 flights left on the schedule while the strike is going on.
"Lufthansa makes good money, and the thing we're negotiating is how much of that goes to investors, how much to satisfy the needs of the customer, and how much to employees," Winfried Streicher, a pilot taking part in the protests told Bloomberg Businessweek. "The only thing we can do to make Lufthansa management move is go on strike.
"We wouldn't go on strike if we were at the nitty gritty stage of these talks," Ilja Schulz, president of the pilot union told Bloomberg Businessweek. "There is a wide gap," Schulz told Bloomberg Businessweek.
According to The Wall Street The Journal, the three day saga is expected to be the most time the airline has most endured during a strike, since the last incident in 2010 where pilots walked the picket line for four days.
Negotiations about pay have been ongoing for over two years, and modifications to pilots pensions and their transitional retirement benefits agreements have reported added to the stir The Journal reported.
In the last month however, security employees went on a strike of their own that reportedly disrupted traffic flow at Frankfurt International Airport leading to expenditures totaling three million euros or $4.1 million in United States currency The Journal reported.
