Airline Strikes Are Breaking Out And Being Called Off Across Europe
We're thinking of starting a daily column just devoted to which airline sector of what major European country is on strike. It's genuinely getting hard to keep up. At the end of last week, Lufthansa's pilots were going on strike but—at least formally—British Airways' cabin crews and France's air controllers were still on the job. A few days later the situation is exactly the opposite.
Yesterday the bulk of employees at British Airways, Great Britain's flagship airline— which, we'll remind you, is not a small company—voted in favor of striking. No one knows when exactly they'll be walking out, but that's just part of the fun. Across the Channel, France's air traffic controllers chose this morning as the first day of their own five day strike. 25% of flights of CDG flights and 50% of Orly flights will be canceled for the duration. Thousands of travelers were already stranded across the continent by a four day work suspension on the part of Lufthansa pilots that began yesterday, though as of today they're suspending their suspension. Isn't this fun?
With Lufthansa, the pilots have agreed to wait another two weeks before resuming their strike. Talks between the airline and the employee representatives are set to resume as well, the two sides having been called on the carpet by a judge yesterday. Listen. We're obviously going to keep track of all of this stuff. Above and beyond it being industry news, travelers need to know what's happening with their flights. But it's going to be extremely messy.
In this economy there are two types of airlines: those who cut costs and those who go out of business (technically there's a third—those that cut costs and go out of business anyway—but that's such a downer). Unions will fight some of the more exorbitant cost-cutting measures but they have to toe a very fine line: prevent an airline from scaling back too much, and find they'll find themselves without an airline and without a job.
[Photo: Heidas / Wiki Commons]
Related Stories:
· Lufthansa [Jaunted]
· Europe Travel [Jaunted]
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