Flight attendants at the German flag carrier Lufthansa have piled in on strike action, first announced by pilots, that will ground flights and leave tens of thousands of passengers stranded on Thursday.
Pilots represented by the Vereinigung Cockpit union first announced a one-day strike that will take place between 12:01 am on February 12 and conclude at 11:59 pm after seven rounds of tense pension negotiations failed to resolve a deadlock.
Within hours of that announcement, the UFO flight attendant union announced it was also taking strike action on the same day for an unrelated dispute about pay, conditions, and the weakening of collective bargaining rights.
The strike by Lufthansa flight attendants involves crew members employed by the mainline carrier, as well as flight attendants who work for a subsidiary known as Lufthansa CityLine, which operates some short-haul services across Europe.
Embarrassingly for Lufthansa, the strike by CityLine cabin crew was announced on the same day that the airline boasted it had just expanded the role of a replacement subsidiary known as City Airlines to Frankfurt am Main Airport.
Lufthansa created its City Airlines subsidiary in a blatant cost-cutting move, which employs flight attendants on lower pay and with fewer benefits than their peers at the mainline airline. After creating City Airlines, Lufthansa then announced CityLine would be shuttered due to unfavourable union contracts.
City Airlines has expanded to 13 aircraft out of Munich, and Lufthansa hopes to have seven Airbus A320neo planes flying out of Frankfurt with the City Airlines brand by September 2026.
Lufthansa has refused to negotiate a collective social plan for employees affected by the closure of CityLine, while flight attendants at the mainline airline fear that the airline is determined to erode their work conditions and siphon off their flights to cheaper subsidiary companies.
Over the last few years, chief executive Carsten Spohr has focused a lot of effort on creating subsidiary airlines with the simple aim of cutting costs.
Thursday’s strike action is described as a “warning strike’ – a one-day walkout that is meant to signal the union’s intent to carry out further strikes unless their demands are met.
Lufthansa says it won’t negotiate a package for CityLine employees because a date for the subsidiary’s closure hasn’t yet been set.
The last strike action by Lufthansa flight attendants and ground employees in early 2024 is estimated to have cost the airline €350 million (US $372 million), while one-off bonus payments offered to end the dispute cost the carrier an additional €100 million.
Meanwhile, pilots say the airline has failed to reach a compromise agreement on pensions after seven rounds of negotiations ended in a deadlock last September.
When pilots last staged a 24-hour strike in September 2024, more than 800 flights were cancelled, and 130,000 passengers were left stranded.
Sphor previously described the mainline Lufthansa carrier as a ‘problem child,’ explaining that costs had to be slashed to keep the airline competitive against regional rivals.
