BERLIN (Reuters) – About 30,000 passengers will likely be affected by a one-day strike by pilots at Eurowings on Thursday, said Lufthansa’s budget airline, which added that it was doing everything it could to minimize the strike’s consequences.
The airline said on Wednesday it expects to be able to operate about half its usual schedule of just over 500 flights.
The action will affect only Eurowings Germany flights, not those of Eurowings Europe.
Pilots’ union Vereinigung Cockpit (VC), which announced the strike on Tuesday after 10 rounds of talks failed, wants Eurowings to ease pilots’ workloads by, for example, cutting the amount of time a pilot would have to be on duty or increasing their rest periods.
A Eurowings board member, Kai Duve, said in a statement that the demands endanger the viability of the airline.
(Reporting by Klaus Lauer, Writing by Miranda Murray, Editing by Rachel More)