Lufthansa pilots launched a strike Monday, deepening Germany's travel chaos after train drivers stopped work at the weekend just as school holidays began in much of the country. The top-selling Bild daily complained that "ping-pong strikes are crippling our economy", Europe's biggest, as about 10,000 pilots and 20,000 train drivers had "taken hostage" 80 million Germans.
The German Industry Federation charged that the pilots strike, following the "disproportionate" railway stoppage, "harms the entire economy" by hitting logistics, tourism and business travel. The government said the strikes will certainly "impact some sectors of the economy", though there was no reason to change Germany's 2014 growth forecast, which was lowered this month to 1.2 percent.
Pilots for Lufthansa, Europe's biggest airline, said they would broaden strike action to long-haul flights on top of previously announced stoppages on short- and medium-length routes. The industrial action on Monday and Tuesday was expected to affect more than 200,000 passengers on 1,400 flights, said Lufthansa, advising passengers to check for updated information on its website.
Pilots stopped short- and medium-haul flights departing between 1100 GMT Monday and 2159 GMT Tuesday, as well as intercontinental flights scheduled to leave Tuesday between 0400 and 2159 GMT. The strike will not affect Lufthansa subsidiaries Austrian, Swiss and Brussels Airlines or Germanwings, the low-cost carrier whose pilots staged a 12-hour strike last week.
Pilots union Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) launched its eighth action in recent months in a bid to keep an early retirement scheme that management wants to phase out to reduce costs. Lufthansa accused the union of bringing Germany to "a standstill" and sought to draft in pilots working in management positions to ensure a third of scheduled services still operate.
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