Flights Cancelled as Strikes Hit German, Spanish Airports

BERLIN (Dispatches) – Nearly all flights at Germany’s Cologne-Bonn airport and the majority at nearby Duesseldorf were cancelled or diverted on Monday due to strikes.
The walkouts also affected local transportation, day-care facilities and local administration in Germany’s most populous region.
At Cologne-Bonn airport, the strikes commenced on Sunday evening. On Monday, all but two of the day’s 136 planned flights are expected to go ahead, German news agency dpa reported.
In Dusseldorf, only 89 of the planned 330 flights are expected to take place as scheduled, with most of the rest being cancelled.
The strikes at both airports are expected to end overnight between Monday and Tuesday.
The one-day “warning strike” comes amid difficult pay talks for employees of Germany’s federal and municipal governments and for airport security staff.
Walkouts planned Monday also were set to affect buses and trams in parts of the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, as well as day-care centers for children and other services.
Unions are seeking a 10.5 percent pay raise. Employers so far have offered an increase totaling 5 percent in two stages and one-time payments of €2,500 per employee - which unions have rejected as insufficient.
On Friday, warning strikes organized by trade union Verdi NRW led to thousands of cancelled flights at seven German airports. Lufthansa was forced to cancel all flights from Frankfurt and Munich just days after an IT failure caused major disruption for the airline.
Various strikes are planned across Europe in the coming months, including in Spain, France and the UK.
Ground staff working for Swissport Handling at 17 airports in Spain, including Barcelona, Madrid, Alicante, Malaga and Lanzarote, have begun a series of strikes in a dispute over pay and working conditions.
Walk-outs are planned for every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday until April 13.

Of Monday’s usual 136 daily passenger flights scheduled for Cologne Bonn airport, only two were set to operate as scheduled.

It is the latest in a series of strikes and protests that have hit major European economies, including France, Britain and Spain, as higher food and energy prices knock incomes and living standards after the COVID-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine.

“If the employers continue to be obstructionist and do not present us with results, then the reaction of the employees here is clear,” a Verdi spokesperson said at Cologne Bonn airport.

Verdi announced the strike on Friday after it said collective bargaining efforts for public service workers and aviation security workers had failed to come closer to an agreement.

The airports, which service airlines including Lufthansa, Turkish Airlines and Aegean Airlines, were largely empty because passengers had been informed of the strike in time to change their plans.

The union brought air traffic to a standstill earlier this month with one-day strikes at seven major airports, including the Frankfurt and Munich hubs, affecting nearly 300,000 passengers.

Cities across the western state of North Rhine Westphalia, including Cologne, Leverkusen and Bonn, were also affected by public service worker strikes on Monday.

An agreement in negotiations on behalf of more than 2.5 million employees of the federal government and local authorities is a long way off, Verdi says.

Verdi and the German Civil Service Association are demanding 10.5% more pay for state employees, or at least 500 euros ($527.75) more a month.

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Flights Cancelled as Strikes Hit German, Spanish Airports