sfoeuroflyer

First who do the LH pilots think they are? French pilots? I gave up on AF after one too many strikes. Not just flight crews, but air controllers, baggage handlers, fuelers, ground staff. Etc. Happily my change to the LH group took me to LX, not LH. From what I am seeing LH is following down the AF path and it is not a good one.

Frankly I think passengers should band together as vigilante parties and visit a bit of inconvenience on them to match what they dish out to the innocent passengers.

Basically there is no place for strikes when vital transport is involved. The collateral damage to society and thousands of people outweighs whatever rights the workers (?) claim. Simple math.

ysolde

Meh, sounds like they have every right to strike, under the terms of their contract (though, TBH, I haven't read it, and I could be wrong). As passengers, we have every right to fly other airlines, if these strikes are creating too much uncertainty in our travel plans. Believe me, our family has one more upcoming trip on LH. No further flights on LH are planned.

Germanfflyer

Striking is a constitutional right in Europe - just the same way carrying a gun and shooting around is in the US - just it is so much more peaceful and does not kill people!

malmostoso

A thousand times this.

I don't like having my travel disrupted because of a strike, but when I read ITS ALL THE UNIONS FAULT THEY SHOULD BE BANNED MURRICA HURR HURR I lose my temper.

Now, back IT, the weekend looks quiet on the strike front, right? Hopefully it will hold a little longer. I am looking forward to my first trip on new C to a new airport (HND)

Germanfflyer

I am assuming the next 7 days will be quiet...they have to give time to see how it goes.....

YuropFlyer

Seems my travel this year so far is going perfectly around the strikes.. what a shame

oliver2002

It seems Spohr & co went into a media offensive yesterday:
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaf...sive-1.2123668
http://www.handelsblatt.com/unterneh.../10683600.html

It seems LH will now inform the pilots directly about the recent offers made to VC so they can form an opinion about their own union

kamel123

Well, yes indeed, the right to strike is in the constitution. In the past, it used to be a competitive advantage of Germany over countries such as France or Italy that labor relations were less confrontational. Thus, there were significantly fewer strikes and less disruptions to the economy.

This is apparrently no longer the case. So far this year (and this list might not even be complete), LH group passengers have been affected by the following strikes:

10 September - LH pilots MUC
5 September - LH pilots FRA
29 August - 4U pilots
2-4 April - LH pilots
27 March - Ground services (Verdi) at different German airports
21 February - FRA security personnel
13 February - DUS ground services
29 January - Air traffic controllers (thankfully cancelled last minute)

Now, my question is - which side started the confrontation? The answer might not be clear cut, and it also might differ for each of the different groups in the list above.

As far as the pilots are concerned, I have no sympathy at all, though. They went on strike to conserve a very comfortable early retirement regime that has become totally out of touch with what is usual in similar professions. Plus LH's offer is still extremely generous from my perspective: The privileges of existing pilots will not be touched, the regime will just be phase out for newly hired pilots as of Jan 2014.

The irony of it all: LH used to have a fixed pilot retirement age of 55 - hence the generous early retirement regime, which was designed to bridge the years until normal retirement age. What got the ball rolling was that a few pilots went to court against the fixed retirement age on the grounds of age discrimination, and they won. And now they want the best of both worlds. Talk about entitled...

shorthauldad

Hmm. Extrapolating from that it could be that the next one will be on the 15th.

Time I started thinking about a Plan B for Monday!

more4less

I hope you are wrong, I am landing in Fra on the 15th.

Gunner14

LH432 was operated by a 748 today, rather than the usual 744. Was this a result of the 747 that was sent to MUC?

f4freeJunior

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9900; de) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.1.0.1033 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

LHR is also on strike today! Not every terminal though. I'm departing from T5 now to BSL and everything is just alright.

TRAVELSIG

Just a baggage handler strike and only T1,T2, and T3.

The news reports minimal delays.

My colleague flying out of LHR today wouldn't have even noticed had it not been in the newspaper.

oliver2002

Doubt it. The two spares (D-ABTH and TF) are serving EWR & DEN, something must have happened to the 744 planned for ORD. D-ABVY went to YYZ shortly after completing the MUC rotation.

Gunner14

Ah, just a coincidence then. Thanks for the info!