FRANKFURT, Feb 20, (Agencies): Travellers in Europe face further delays and flight cancellations this week as ground staff at Frankfurt airport plan to extend their strike until early on Wednesday, with neither side in the dispute showing any sign of giving ground.
The strike by apron controllers at Europe’s third-busiest airport in terms of passenger numbers, which grounded hundreds of flights last week, went into a third day on Monday and was scheduled to continue until 0400 GMT on Wednesday.
A spokesman for the GdF union said it was quite likely that the workers would strike again on Wednesday.
The walkouts started last week after GdF and airport operator Fraport failed to reach an agreement on wages for about 200 workers who guide planes in and out of their parking positions.
Fraport said 231 flights, of a total 1,250 scheduled for Monday, would be cancelled, with a similar number to follow on Tuesday.
Lufthansa, which accounts for more than half of flights at Frankfurt airport, said it expects to cancel about 200 incoming and outgoing flights on German and European routes on Monday, while all intercontinental flights would take place.
The situation will not be as bad on Tuesday, with only around 160 flights cancelled, Lufthansa said. A further eight flights on Wednesday were also cancelled, according to its website.
Air Berlin, Germany’s second-biggest airline, showed a total of eight cancelled flights between Berlin and Frankfurt on Monday and Tuesday.
The apron controllers, who represent about 1 percent of Fraport’s staff at the airport, want higher pay, arguing their jobs have become more complex since the fourth runway started operating last October.
Fraport has said demands for pay increases of between 50 and 70 percent are unreasonable, and has called on the union to resume talks.
Also:
MUMBAI: India’s cash-strapped Kingfisher Airlines said Monday it would appear before the aviation regulator to explain scores of cancelled flights over recent days, as the carrier’s problems mounted.
Debt-laden Kingfisher cancelled 16 flights on Monday from Mumbai and several more from New Delhi and elsewhere, on top of scrapping more than 30 flights the previous day.
The airline said it was forced to curtail its services after tax authorities froze its bank accounts reportedly due to its inability to clear its unpaid service taxes.
“This has severely affected our ability to make operational payments, leading to the current curtailment,” Kingfisher said in a statement on Monday.
“We are appealing to them to see reason that inconvenience to the travelling public is not in anybody’s interest and are in talks to get (bank accounts) unfrozen.”
Kingfisher added that its chief executive Sanjay Aggarwal had been summoned for a meeting with the Directorate General of Civil Aviation on Tuesday.
“We will appear before the DGCA tomorrow and submit all details they want and also a plan to restore the full schedule,” the airline’s statement said.
Kingfisher, which announced a third quarter loss of $88 million last week, has been beset with difficulties caused by soaring fuel costs and high local sales taxes, as well as a domestic price war.