Germany’s Lufthansa asks court to halt pilots’ strike; 800 flights canceled, travel upended

Lufthansa pilots strike, travel chaos grips Europe

FRANKFURT — Thousands of travelers scrambled to find flights, trains, hotel rooms or rental cars on Monday after Lufthansa pilots began a four-day walkout over job security that grounded at least 800 flights.

The Lufthansa strike disrupted plans for 10,000 passengers worldwide but that was just the tip of the travel chaos iceberg.

Also Monday, five unions representing French air traffic controllers announced a four-day strike of their own starting Tuesday that is forcing the cancelation of hundreds of flights at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports. France’s DGAC aviation authority ordered airlines to cancel 50 percent of the flights at Orly and 25 percent of the flights at Charles de Gaulle.

British Airways PLC, meanwhile, faced a renewed threat of cabin crew strikes, after the Unite union announced Monday that most of its members had voted in favor of a walkout.

And Eurostar — the main train alternative to planes between Paris, Brussels and London — suffered yet another embarrassing train failure.

In Germany, Deutsche Lufthansa AG quickly rushed to get a court injunction to halt the strike and send 4,000 pilots back to work before more harm was done to passengers and shareholders. The court in Frankfurt said a decision could come as soon as Monday night.

“This strike is disproportionate,” Claudia Lange, a Lufthansa spokeswoman, told The Associated Press. “We hope for a decision within the next 24 hours.”

Albert Carles and his wife arrived at Frankfurt airport after a 14-hour flight from Vietnam to find that their connecting flight to Marseille was canceled and trains to Paris were overbooked.

“There is no information, we are left on our own,” he told German news agency DAPD. “We have not eaten or drunk anything.”

Lufthansa, Europe’s second-biggest airline by sales, said many long-haul flights to the U.S., including New York and Denver, were canceled but it was still running many domestic flights and short-haul routes across Europe. Other flights to the U.S. — including Newark, New Jersey, Dallas and Chicago — were running as scheduled Monday, as were flights to destinations in Africa, South America and Asia.

The airline estimates the strike could cost it some €25 million ($34 million) per day.

In London, Unite, Britain’s biggest labor union, said after the vote that it was not announcing any strike date and its members will meet Thursday to discuss the ballot result before deciding on a strike date.

A previous strike threat by BA cabin crew — planned for the Christmas and New Year’s holidays — was canceled only after the airline obtained an emergency court injunction blocking it.

A Eurostar Paris-to London train, meanwhile, inexplicably broke down in southern England late Sunday, plunging more than 700 passengers into darkness and forcing them to climb down ladders onto the track to a replacement train. They arrived in London about 2:30 a.m. Monday, more than four hours late.

Last week, Eurostar was sharply criticized by independent investigators for its response when several trains broke down before Christmas in the Channel Tunnel, disrupting travel plans for tens of thousands of people.

Fears about job security were the underlying theme for all the airline work actions.

The Lufthansa pilots are concerned that cheaper crews from the company’s smaller airlines in other countries could eventually replace them. The French air traffic controllers are upset about plans to integrate European air traffic operations, leaving them to face new work rules, the loss of their civil servant benefits or even job cuts. British Airways cabin crews don’t want the company to slash the number of staff working on flights.

The Lufthansa strike is set to end Thursday at midnight but could be extended.

“The four days apparently are not enough to get Lufthansa going to find a solution with us at the negotiating table,” Alexander Gerhard-Madjidi, a spokesman for the Cockpit pilots’ union, told Bayerischer Rundfunk Radio.

“That means we are going to prepare further strike measures and they are going to be expanded in length and duration,” he said.

Pilots for Lufthansa Cargo and the low-budget subsidiary, Germanwings, were also taking part in the strike.

Lufthansa typically has 1,800 flights a day and offers some 160 long-haul flights to destinations worldwide. The airline said it was trying to rebook travelers on partner airlines or trains and would reimburse those unable to be rescheduled.

Resat Saritas tried to get home to Dubai but found his flight was canceled. Despite his unhappiness over his flight, he said the strike was justified.

“The pilots deserve more money. The mentality of the company is not good. Please don’t do this again,” he said. “It’s not nice for the pilots and it’s not nice for the passengers.”

Germanwings said it was still operating several flights this week to destinations including Britain, Greece, Spain, Bulgaria, Italy and Croatia, among others, but warned of cancellations, too.

Lufthansa, based in Cologne, owns or holds significant stakes in airlines including Swiss International Airlines, Austrian Airlines, JetBlue of the U.S. and Britain’s BMI. Those airlines are not affected by the strike.

The pilots are seeking increased work security and want German labor conditions to apply to Lufthansa pilots hired abroad, in an effort to prevent their jobs from migrating to neighboring countries with cheaper conditions. Lufthansa has denied it was planning to relocate the jobs.

Lange said Lufthansa was still open to further talks, but only without preconditions.

Tony Concil of the International Air Transit Association in Geneva noted that the global airline industry is still losing money and still needs to cut operating costs.

“The industry lost $11 billion in 2009 and will probably lose $5.6 billion in 2010,” he told AP. “The emphasis at airlines is saving cash, managing capacity as effectively as possible, and cutting costs.”

Lufthansa reached out to travelers online, posting a strike schedule on its Web site and offering updates on canceled flights on its Twitter feed.

But some travelers were still caught unaware.

“We arrived in Frankfurt from Taiwan. We have been on the road for 24 hours,” a Swiss woman told AP Television News. “We wanted to fly on with Lufthansa but couldn’t because the flight was canceled. We could not get a Swiss Air flight either so now we have to go on the train for another six hours.”

Juergen Baetz reported from Berlin. Associated Press writers Jean-Marie Godard in Paris, Raphael G. Satter in London and Matt Moore in Berlin contributed to this report.

On the Net:

www.lufthansa.com

www.twitter.com/lufthansa_de

www.ba.com