A strike by the ver.di union has brought large-scale air traffic to a halt in Germany today. According to the operators and the union, virtually all passenger and cargo flights have been canceled at the hubs in Frankfurt am Main and Munich and at five other major airports.
According to the airport association, more than 2,400 flights with almost 300,000 passengers were affected.
According to the operators and the union, virtually all commercial air traffic has been grounded at Germany’s two biggest airports in Frankfurt and Munich.
“Frankfurt is stopped”
“Frankfurt is at a standstill,” a spokesperson for ver.di said this morning at the airport in the Hessian metropolis. According to a spokesman for airport operator Fraport, only twelve flight movements were planned for today instead of the usual 1,000 flights. These were flights with relief supplies for earthquake victims in Turkey and Syria, for whom an emergency arrangement had been made earlier.
A comparable picture emerged at other airports. According to an airport spokesman, around 750 flights were canceled in Munich. That means virtually all commercial air traffic is grounded, he said. Passengers hardly came to the airport. Only “very sporadically” did people appear who apparently hadn’t noticed anything about the strike.
According to the spokesman, only special flights registered with participants of the Munich Security Conference, which was attended by various government representatives from Germany and abroad, were processed in Munich. By previous agreements, its handling is “guaranteed”, he underlined.
With the all-day alert strike, Ver.di wants to put pressure on the ongoing collective negotiations for the public sector at the federal and local levels. The union demands a salary increase of 10.5% for a period of twelve months, but at least 500 euros more per month.