The Deutsche Lufthansa AG bosses have apologised to passengers and cabin crew over a series of more than a dozen pilot strikes while cautioning that walkouts may continue.
In a letter issued March 20th that had been sent to the airline’s customers, senior managers said sorry for disruption caused by the strikes, yet “cannot and will not make any compromises that endanger our future viability.”
Pilots are asking to keep conditions under an early-retirement program, and have just emerged from the longest strike in the carrier’s history.
With both sides still at loggerheads, a cabin-crew union has taken an unprecedented step of offering to act as a mediator in the long running dispute. The union is stepping in because it feels that all Lufthansa employees are ultimately bearing the brunt of the walkouts. It has been estimated that so far the dispute has cost Lufthansa over 230 million euros. 2014.
The cabin crew union, UFO say the situation “can’t go on like this,” claiming the company and pilots are “holding all employees hostage” in their conflict over pensions, which ought to be solved through mediation including representatives of cabin and ground staff, UFO said.
Lufthansa’s management board had been scheduled to meet today, Tuesday, however the crash of Germanwings Airbus A320 has taken precedence over management considerations.