Security workers staged a full-day walkout at six airports including Duesseldorf, Cologne Bonn, and Berlin airports on March 14, and one-day strikes have also been called for other airports on March 15, including Frankfurt and Hamburg.
The strike occurs as airlines are reeling from the effects of the war in Ukraine, with soaring fuel prices and airspace closures, after two years of low travel demand because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The walkout by security staff has resulted in a high three-digit number of flight cancellations, according to German aviation association ADV.
Roughly 160 of them were at Duesseldorf airport, accounting for more than half of the planned 290 departures and arrivals, the airport stated.
At Cologne Bonn, 94 of 136 flights were called off, and Berlin airport’s website also showed many canceled flights.
The March 15 walkout will hit Germany’s busiest airport, Frankfurt, which handled about 2.1 million passengers in February.
Frankfurt airport operator Fraport stated that only transit passengers would be able to get to their flights on March 15, when the airport was originally due to handle roughly 770 departures and arrivals, serving close to 80,000 passengers.
Lufthansa, Germany’s flagship carrier, which has a hub at Frankfurt, said it was canceling 48 flights on March 15.
Labor union Verdi is demanding that employers raise the wages of airport security staff by at least 1 euro per hour for the next 12 months and that staff in different parts of Germany earn the same.
BDLS, an association of aviation safety companies, stated that all of Verdi’s demands, when combined, amounted to increases of up to 40 percent, referring to them as “utopian.”
The next round of wage talks between BDLS and Verdi is scheduled for March 16 and 17, according to the two parties.
