Hundreds of ground crew members went on strike over pay, shutting down seven of Germany’s biggest airports.
Aircraft are grounded at Frankfurt, Munich, Stuttgart, Bremen, Hamburg, Hanover and Dortmund.
More than 2,300 flights have been cancelled, affecting 300,000 people. This has pretty much put an end to air travel.
Workers’ pay needs to go up by 10.5%, according to the Ver.di union and the Civil Service Association.
A few international flights left Leipzig Airport this morning, but all domestic flights were cancelled.
At Frankfurt Airport, a couple of people rolled their suitcases through the busy departures terminal. It was almost as empty as it had been during the Covid pandemic, a local TV reporter said.
The action happened at the same time as the Munich Security Conference, an important meeting of world leaders and defence experts.
It was not expected to affect the arrival of important guests, but other delegates were told to take the train.
Airports that send emergency aid to Turkey and Syria because of earthquakes have said that the flights will go on as planned.
But some German business leaders are very angry about the strike, which comes just two days after 200 flights were cancelled at Frankfurt Airport because of building work that took down Lufthansa’s online check-in and boarding systems.
Representatives of small and medium-sized business groups said that what the unions were doing was wrong and that they were holding the whole country hostage for their own needs.
Staff shortages caused chaos at airports last summer. Flights were delayed or cancelled, and people had to wait in line for hours to check in or go through security.
A Ver.di representative said that if pay and working conditions didn’t get better, these problems would keep happening and make for another rough summer at the country’s airports.
Lufthansa has already said that it will have to cut back on its summer schedule because it doesn’t have enough staff.
The unions in Germany are well-run, and most workers go on strike, so you don’t see many picket lines. But workers are expected to hold protests at different airports all day long.
So far, their employers have turned down all of their requests, and they haven’t made their own offer yet. Talks are expected to continue next week. And Frank Werneke, who is in charge of Ver.di, has been making threats.
He said, “The next strikes will be different in some way.” “This is just a taste of what’s to come unless the employers make a good offer next week.”