Musings of The Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.
The Lufthansa & Germanwings strike has been lifted after 1 day with the pilots having returned to work (for now). Even though the strike is lifted expect significant disruptions for the next couple of days, particularly for longhaul passengers.
Most Lufthansa and Germanwings flights are expected to be disrupted next week. Note, however, that some related airlines’ flights are all operating. This includes Swiss, Austrian, bmi, Brussels Airlines, CityLine, Eurowings, Lufthansa Italia.
Lufthansa has published a schedule of their flights which they anticipate being able to operate. All flights not listed on that schedule between 22 and 25 February are cancelled.
At present they are allowing refunds, rebooking onto other Lufthansa flights (in the same cabin but any available booking class), and heavily restricted rebooking onto non Lufthansa flights (requires same booking class). Hopefully the restrictions on rebooking onto other airlines will soon be eased otherwise there will be a lot of people unable to travel on the days they want to. For domestic German flights, Lufthansa also allows rebooking onto Deutsche Bahn trains.
For the latest information for affected passengers check the link above to Lufthansa’s website.
Airline assistance (EU reg 261/2004)
EU reg 261/2004 articles 5 and 6 apply for cancellations and delays respectively. This means food, 2 phone calls, and accommodation (if necessary) must be provided to passengers whose flights are cancelled or materially delayed. Lufthansa will likely argue that article 7 compensation will not apply due to the exemption for extraordinary circumstances.
A 4 day strike running from Monday to Thursday next week has been announced by pilots at Lufthansa and Germanwings (source New York Times). While other airlines in the group are not directly affected there probably will be some impacts on their flights too, not least due to many thousands of rebooked passengers.
Edited to add.
Related airlines which are not directly affected by the strike include:
In all cases it is the operating airline that matters, not codeshares. Check your flight details carefully.
