At the Lufthansa parent company, the exploratory talks with the pilots who were willing to go on strike initially remained fruitless. The airline confirmed on Saturday that so far no result had been reached in several confidential talks. “We want to remain in discussion mode and have therefore offered the Cockpit Association further appointments in order (…) to develop sustainable solutions,” said a spokesman on request.
The union itself initially did not comment and also left a report by the specialist portal “aero.de” without comment, according to which a strike at the highly profitable freight subsidiary Lufthansa Cargo is now “in the room”. There, the pilots had shown a particularly high willingness to go to industrial action for their demands in a ballot by the VC.
In principle, the VC is able to go on strike in both Lufthansa Passenger Airlines and Cargo after a successful ballot. Before the soundings, there had already been six official rounds of negotiations without a result.
The Lufthansa leadership had recently signaled a willingness to compromise and accepted the VC partial demand for 5.5 percent more money for the rest of 2022. On the other hand, there have been no public statements on further demands for automatic inflation compensation from 2023 or on changes in the tariff structure.
The pilots had also been given the prospect of a renewed fleet commitment. This means that a certain number of aircraft from the Group fleet would again be reserved solely for the pilots of the core company Lufthansa.
