FRANKFURT: Tens of thousands of air passengers were stranded on Tuesday as workers at airlines Lufthansa and Air France staged strikes that crippled traffic at several major European airports.

Germany’s biggest carrier Lufthansa was forced to cancel 800 out of 1,600 scheduled flights, including 58 long-haul flights.

German public sector workers including ground crew and airport firefighters walked out at 5am with the strike due to last until 6pm. Tuesday’s “warning strike” hit Germany’s biggest airport Frankfurt as well as other regional hubs such as Munich, Cologne and Bremen.

Other airports such as Hamburg, Leipzig and Hanover were hit with knock-on effects.

Half of the flights at Munich were delayed or cancelled according to the union Verdi, national news agency DPA reported.

Beyond airports, local transport, kindergartens, rubbish collection and hospitals were also affected, as civil servants walked out to demand a 6.0-per cent pay raise for the 2.3 million people working for Germany’s federal, state and local governments.

Given the country’s economic strength, “when if not now should there be significant pay increases for workers, including those in the public sector?” asked Verdi leader Frank Bsirske in an appearance at Frankfurt airport.

“We’re determined to achieve this.” But the ADV airport operators’ association accused unions of “lacking all proportionality”, with the strike disrupting tens of thousands of journeys — 90,000 at Lufthansa alone — and costs they said would run into the millions.

Airport operator Fraport said that service should return to normal in the early evening.

“It will take about 45 to 60 minutes for all the positions to be manned again and then we’ll go back to normal service,” a spokesman told DPA.

Travellers had plenty of notice of upsets to their plans, avoiding scenes of chaos at Frankfurt airport, but some could not avoid travelling on Tuesday.

Published in Dawn, April 11th, 2018