The next strike in the Lufthansa Group begins on Tuesday. Three unions are jockeying for influence at the young company Discover. Passengers must expect delays and cancellations.
Passengers of the Lufthansa subsidiary Discover Airlines must expect flight cancellations and delays in the coming days. The unions Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) and Ufo have called on the pilots and cabin crew to go on a four-day strike, which is scheduled to last from this Tuesday morning through to Friday (August 30). All departures from Germany are affected.
Discover Airlines said it was working to keep the impact on passengers as minimal as possible and to operate as many flights as possible. Passengers should regularly check their flight status and provide contact details in their booking. During the four-day strike window, around 270 Discover Airlines flights on short, medium and long-haul routes from Frankfurt and Munich are planned.
The airline did not initially provide any precise figures on expected flight cancellations. The Ufo union expects that Lufthansa will cushion the effects of the strike by reallocating flights to other group companies.
The holiday airline Discover Airlines, founded in 2021, is flying 27 aircraft from Munich and Frankfurt to holiday destinations in Europe and overseas. Around 1,900 people work on board, an unknown number of whom are unionized.
The background to the industrial dispute is a conflict with the Verdi union, which concluded the first collective bargaining agreements for pilots and flight attendants at Discover at the young airline. The demands of Ufo and VC differ little from the agreement with Verdi, but the sector unions want to implement their own collective bargaining agreements. Verdi does not have enough members in flight operations and was appointed as a collective bargaining partner by Lufthansa management, they believe.
The VC pilots went on strike in three rounds this winter. The flight attendants’ union Ufo also called on its members to stop work in order to force negotiations.
Source: Stern
