Lufthansa airline cancelled almost 890 flights on Wednesday as pilots remained on strike in a long-running wage dispute with the company. Lufthansa, Germany's biggest airline, said ever since the strike began on 23 November it has grounded about 98,000 passengers. The walkout was extended to long-haul flights after it affected only short-haul services initially.
On Saturday, the company tweeted: "Almost all LH (Lufthansa) flights will operate according to schedule tomorrow." But, is spite of that flights have been cancelled. According to Lufthansa, about 4,461 flights have been cancelled in the six days of strikes since last Wednesday.
After a two-day pause on Sunday and Monday, the pilots launched the 15th round of industrial action since spring 2014 on Tuesday.
Lufthansa offered the pilots a increased wage by 4.4 percent in two instalments along with a one-off payment equal to 1.8 months' salary. However, the union demands an average annual pay increase of 3.7 percent for 5,400 pilots in Germany over a five-year period backdated to 2012.
But, after several talks with management, the directors and pilots have failed to come to a conclusion regarding the wage increase. The pilots' union Vereinigung Cockpit has flatly rejected Lufthansa's offer of a mediation process. On Wednesday morning, the flight crew organization plans to hold a demonstration at Lufthansa hub airport Frankfurt.
However, other airlines in the group such as Eurowings, Swiss, Austrian Airlines and Brussels Airlines are running normal service and are not affected by the strike. Cockpit has not so far called for the strike to continue into Thursday.
