PARIS — Advance planning by Lufthansa, one of Europe’s busiest airlines, seemed to be paying off Wednesday at the beginning of a three-day strike by pilots, despite the cancellation of about 900 flights worldwide.þþBut some travelers were nonetheless left scrambling to find alternative flights. And the city of Frankfurt, a major Lufthansa hub, was bracing for possible trouble in the coming days, as thousands of attendees of a big industrial trade show wondered whether they would be able to find ways out of the city on Thursday and Friday.þþThe airports at Frankfurt and Munich, another Lufthansa hub, were relatively calm, according to airline and airport representatives, after a two-day effort by the airline to notify passengers of flight cancellations that were expected to affect more than 425,000 travelers through Friday.þþLufthansa, Europe’s second-largest airline by number of passengers after Ryanair, said that it had sent more than 200,000 text messages and emails to passengers with reservations for flights during the strike period, warning them of the cancellations. Thousands of customers had also consulted a list of affected flights posted on the airline’s website.þþRobert Payne, a spokesman for Frankfurt Airport, said that roughly 700 inbound and outbound flights had been canceled there on Wednesday, just over half of the normally scheduled services. He said that cots and other amenities had been prepared for transit passengers who might be stranded, but that, for now, the crowds in the airport’s concourses and check-in halls were relatively thin. He described the atmosphere as “very controlled, very orderly.”þþAdditional airline staff had been added in the terminals and transit lounges in Frankfurt and Munich to take care of waiting passengers there, the airline said.þþNonetheless, some passengers arriving at European airports were unaware of the strike.þþRobert and Jennifer Beamon, newlywed Americans traveling through Europe for their honeymoon, arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport near Paris early Wednesday for a flight to Berlin, only to find that it had been canceled. Lufthansa check-in staff rebooked them on an Air France flight leaving an hour later.þþ“We didn’t even talk to him, I handed him the paper and he just went on the computer and got us a new flight,” said Ms. Beamon, 24. “It seems like they were anticipating this,” added Mr. Beamon, 25.þþTabary Guy, a 48-year-old Frenchman flying to Munich on business, said he had received an email Tuesday from Lufthansa warning him that his flight had been canceled. He said the airline had changed his flight and that he was not expecting to be delayed or inconvenienced.þþThere was little sign of the strike at Frankfurt Airport, Lufthansa’s main hub. A long-distance train station that serves the airport was somewhat more crowded than usual but there were no lines at a Lufthansa counter that serves passengers arriving or departing by rail.þþA man from Albany, who said he did not want to give his name because he worked for the government, was among passengers who were flying on other airlines and was not affected. “We’re on United, I think we’re fine,” he said shortly after getting off a train from Cologne after a two-week tour of Germany.þþLufthansa has made plans to cancel as many as 3,800 flights over the strike period, which is expected to end at 11:59 p.m. Friday. But Helmut Tolksdorf, a spokesman for the airline, said that it was still hopeful that Vereinigung Cockpit, the union representing the majority of the airline’s 5,500 pilots, would agree before the end of the week to resume talks with management.þþ“We still hope that we can go back to the negotiating table,” Mr. Tolksdorf said.þþThe strike follows several months of negotiations over pay increases and benefits for pilots who retire early.þþLufthansa pilots, whose average annual compensation stands at 181,000 euros, or $250,000, are seeking raises of up to 10 percent, while the airline is offering increases of just over 5 percent. In the latest round of talks, the airline abandoned an earlier condition that would have linked future raises to improvements in the airline’s operating profit.þþLufthansa is also seeking to raise the minimum age for early retirement for pilots by three years, to 61 from 58.þþUwe Heinz, 59, said he opted to take a train from Dresden to Frankfurt, rather than an internal flight, before heading to Cuba for a two-week vacation. He said that he was flying to Cuba on Condor, which was not affected by the strike.þþStill, Mr. Heinz expressed what seemed to be widespread lack of sympathy with the pilots’ demands. “When I see what the pilots earn, and what I have to live on, they are complaining at a very high level,” said Mr. Heinz, wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat. “The rest of us have to work until we’re 65.”þþBy making demands separately from other airline workers, the pilots have departed from German labor tradition, in which all employees of a company stand together. The three-day strike is also seen as unusually long in a country where unions prefer to stage short warning strikes to demonstrate their clout. The union representing Lufthansa workers limited its strike last week to part of a day.þþAnother person angry at the pilots was John Chen, owner of Elite Lighting Co., which is based in Zhongshan, China. Mr. Chen said that he had been in Frankfurt for three days to attend a large lighting industry trade fair and that he had planned to visit a customer in Kotowice, Poland, afterward.þþ“My good plans are totally destroyed,” Mr. Chen said. “My customer will be very disappointed because of my absence.”þþMr. Chen displayed a printout of an itinerary planned back in July. He and the customer were going to discuss a new product, he said. “Now everything is destroyed,” Mr. Chen said. “I’m very upset. In China such things would never happen.”þþ“There is no fast train to Katowice,'’ Mr. Chen said. “How do I get there?” He said that he would visit a different customer in Amsterdam instead, and try to get to Poland when the strike ended.þþSome members of the German Parliament have called for laws to limit the right to strike by small unions that have the capacity to create big disruptions of public services. News coverage of the strike has been largely negative in the country, where labor usually enjoys a measure of sympathy. Spiegel Online, which normally leans left, featured an interview with an anonymous pilot who said that he thought his colleagues’ demands were unreasonable.þþLufthansa is midway through a three-year restructuring drive aimed at eliminating €1.5 billion in costs by the end of next year. The carrier, like many of its full-service European peers, is striving to streamline operations to confront rising competition from budget airlines on European routes, as well as encroachment on their lucrative long-distance routes by Middle Eastern rivals.þþAlexander Dobrindt, Germany’s transport minister, condemned the pilots’ strike in an interview published Wednesday in the mass-circulation newspaper Bild.þþ“Every strike day limits the mobility of hundreds of thousands of people,” Mr. Dobrindt said, adding that a “swift solution” to the conflict was “also in the interest of the unions.”þþThe pilots’ action follows a strike last week by service workers at Frankfurt Airport, which also caused minimal disruptions because most passengers had been forewarned. Unlike during last week’s labor action, only Lufthansa flights are affected this week, meaning that travelers might be able to switch to flights operated by other airlines.þþ
Source: NY Times
