Strike of the Pilots union “Vereinigung Cockpit” (VC) for Lufthansa flights between 23 and 25 November 2016

The pilots union Cockpit (VC) has called for a trike for Lufthansa flights departing from Germany:

On Wednesday, 23 November from 00:01 to 23:59 hours (CET) on all short-haul and long-haul flights

On Thursday, 24 November from 00:01 to 23:59 hours (CET) on all short-haul and long-haul flights

On Friday, 25 November from 00:01 to 23:59 hours (CET) on all short-haul flights

The strike announcement concerns flights operated by Lufthansa. Flights operated by Lufthansa CityLine may also be impacted by the strike action. Flights operated by Germanwings, Eurowings, Air Dolomiti, Austrian Airlines, SWISS and Brussels Airlines are not affected by the strike measures and will continue to operate normally.

On Friday, all long-haul flights from the hubs in Frankfurt and Munich will be operating as scheduled. By noon today, a special flight schedule for short- and medium-haul flights within Germany and Europe will be finalized and all necessary flight cancellations will have been made.

All passengers are requested to check the status of their flight at LH.com before setting out on their journey. Lufthansa passengers who have saved their mobile phone number in their customer profile will be notified about relevant cancellations by text message.

Germany’s pilot union said it planned another 24-hour walkout at Lufthansa on Thursday, after strikes announced for Wednesday led to the cancellation of roughly a third of all flights of the German airline. The union in a statement said all of Lufthansa’s short and long-haul flights out of Germany will be affected by the continued industrial action, planned to run until 2259 GMT on Thursday.

The strike is the 14th to hit the airline in its long-running pay dispute with the Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) union.

Lufthansa said Wednesday’s strike has resulted in the cancellation of 876 of roughly 3,000 flights, affecting about 100,000 passengers and the airline’s chief executive said walkouts would cost the airline high single-digit million euro amounts each day. The union announced the latest strikes following a German court’s rejection of an injunction Lufthansa had asked for to halt strikes last-minute on Tuesday night.

Pilots at Lufthansa will go on strike on Wednesday, increasing pressure in a long-running pay dispute with the airline’s management, their union said on Monday.

The strike will run for 24 hours from midnight and affect short-haul and long-haul flights, Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) said in a statement.

The pilots are striking after pay talks between management and the union broke down earlier this month. The two sides are trying to agree contracts dating back to 2012 and the union is calling for a pay increase of an average 3.7 percent a year over a five-year period.

Lufthansa has offered 2.5 percent increase, which the pilots’ union has said equates to a virtual pay freeze.

We designed and created Fare Finder to help clients ensure they have the best fare available on every booking. This means either the lowest-possible cost for the flight they have chosen, or a great price on the same flight in a better class.

We search fares on Galileo – the Global Distribution System we use to select and book flights – and, with the client, select the best itinerary for the journey, taking into account preferred airlines, routes, dates of travel, times of flights, etc. We then price that itinerary using Galileo to ensure we have the cheapest-possible fare (also pricing up the best fare in the class above). We also establish whether there are corporate fares available that the client may not be aware of. And our experts search for any other means of reducing the cost for that fare. We then switch to Fare Finder to run automatic checks – and we do this every time we book a flight.

 
• First, Fare Finder runs up to 16 simultaneous searches on Galileo to make sure we have considered every possible combination of fare for that flight.

• Second, Fare Finder runs automatic searches on web-based booking engines (for example airlines’ own websites or flight aggregators). This can determine whether there are “web-exclusive” fares we might not see within Galileo.

• Third, Fare Finder interrogates several foreign-based travel agencies. This is to ensure we can make use of fares that might be published in countries outside the UK. When these fares show up, we can make them available to purchase in the normal way.

• Fourth, Fare Finder checks whether there are other flight times on the same airline and date as the original itinerary. If so, and the fares on these flights are cheaper, we can discuss with the client whether they want to switch flights to secure a lower fare, or remain on the originally-chosen flight.

Running Fare Finder only takes around 15 seconds. So, we do this every time we search for an itinerary, which is around 150 times a day. It’s worth doing so to secure the best price for an itinerary, because we find that 30% of the time we use it, Fare Finder does, in fact, find a better priced fare than the original itinerary.
Fare Finder is Global Travel Management’s means of ensuring that, every time a client books a flight, we have done everything we can to secure the lowest-possible fare. We like to say: we don’t miss a fare when you want to book a flight.

From Thursday 10th Nov the Canadian authorities will be checking whether customers have an ETA to travel to Canada where required. Customers with a Canadian resident permit card do not require an ETA.

For further information

See Canadian Government website http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/visit/eta.asp