Lufthansa is facing a one-day ‘warning’ strike by one of its unions on Monday.
As a result they have cancelled the bulk of their schedule for Monday, including all intra-European flying. They’ve also cancelled the bulk of their US departures for Europe tomorrow as well. And there are a handful of Tuesday flights affected.
Lufthansa’s list of cancelled flights is online.
Usually when strikes occur they’ll be scrambling for replacement staff, and those aren’t always fully up to speed on their roles. As a result even limited schedules can be a struggle to operate let alone operate on time, so expect delays even if your flight remains on the schedule.
Fortunately, which the exception of Europe-bound flights departing the US, most flights are affected only for a day (most but not all US flights will be cancelled for two days).
The union that’s striking is ver.di, or United Services Union, and represents 33,000 ground staff at Lufthansa.
I’ve been really fortunate in avoiding airline strikes, and flew through only one in the past four years — the British Airways cabin crew strike. I booked a double miles award on United as a backup to get home London – Washington Dulles, and when my flight ultimately departed I cancelled that award. (I’ve never actually flown on a double miles award but I’ve booked them on more than one occasion as a backup.)
I flew LH C class FRA-JFK during one of these strikes. Service was barely acceptable. Soft drink selection was shameful. I was amazed at the lack of apology for such service, failure to provide a special meal as ordered and their pride in being able to operate the flight.
2007 Jan was a very bad time for us as we were stuck in Asia during the industrial action by BA staff in UK. BA asked us to route via DEL and when the original flight was running on time, refused to let us change back again without a 500$ fee (biz class paid ticket)
Anyway, I got 600 tier points, but did not know / read FT enough to use that at least for AA lounge access. We got started on BA miles and a household account and with 4 adults times 2 rounds of Chase BA 100k cards have too many Avios and too little ability to use them well.
I have refused to give a dime to BA since then and burn avios for short haul AA and have enough to last us through the kids college years…..
and probably our retirement years as well
Is there somewhere to track updates on this? Are the strike(s) expected to continue?
Luckily my flight, ORD – MUC for tomorrow still shows as scheduled. Will the service aboard the plane be affected by this strike? How about the ground services in MUC upon arrival? That is, will the luggage be unloaded?
does anyone know if there are more strikes planned today?
Oops…typo…meant to say does anyone know id there are more strikes planned for MAY ?
No notice from lufthansa about strike till at airport. Was to fly LYS-CHA by way of MUC. Put us up in the Ibis for the day and night. Sorry service, rebooked us for tuesday on AF CDG-ATL.