At the Lufthansa subsidiary Discover, pilots and flight attendants will go on a 24-hour strike on Friday. The Cockpit Association (VC) and Independent Flight Attendants Organization (UFO) unions announced the unusual joint action at the holiday airline. The airline’s management “objects to standard collective agreements both in the cockpit and in the cabin and is delaying or even refusing to negotiate altogether,” they explained.
VC had already organized a five-hour warning strike shortly before Christmas. The pilots are demanding, among other things, the introduction of a salary scale and new regulations on flight duty and rest times. Unfortunately, things continued in the new year “as the old one ended: we are being held back endlessly,” explained union representative Marcel Gröls.
According to Harry Jaeger from UFO, for cabin crew it’s about working conditions and pay – and about starting collective bargaining in the first place. The attempts have so far been “consistently repelled”. “You finally need sufficient and predictable free time as well as a salary that you can actually live on,” explained Jaeger.
The airline Discover Airlines, known until September as Eurowings Discover, is the Lufthansa Group’s new holiday airline. The airline is headquartered in Frankfurt am Main, operates a fleet of 24 aircraft that fly to short-, medium- and long-haul tourist destinations and employs around 2,000 people.
The strike announcement is now starting to have an impact. The company has returned ten flights that it was supposed to fly on Friday for parent company Lufthansa in Munich. According to a spokesman, efforts are being made to present the flights with aircraft and crews in a different way. However, it was still unclear on Thursday afternoon whether the Discover Airlines flights planned from Frankfurt could take place.
A Discover spokeswoman emphasized again that everything is being done to get as many passengers as possible to their destination. She couldn’t say whether flights would have to be canceled. The company had originally spoken of around 20 departures from Frankfurt during the strike period. There were 14 takeoffs listed on the airport’s schedule for Friday, one of which was canceled to Cancun, Mexico. Of 15 planned landings, two from Cancun and Philadelphia have been canceled. In principle, only departures from Germany are on strike, but this can also have consequences for connecting flights.
