Lufthansa to strike again on Wednesday?

First Lufthansa Boeing 787 lands at Frankfurt Airport

Today it was just announced that Lufthansa’s pilots may again be on strike on Wednesday, September 7 unless there is headway on pay.

Four days ago, Lufthansa announced a strike by its pilots, forcing the carrier to cancel all flights. The pilot strike this past Friday caused around 800 flights to be cancelled at its main bases in Frankfurt and Munich which affected 130,000 passengers. Despite the fact that Lufthansa had stated on Friday that it was working to minimize the impact of the strike, apparently, paying its pilots more was not part of that option.

The Friday strike included some flights for Saturday morning. For eturbonews publisher, Juergen Steinmetz, his PNR on Lufthansa from Malta to Frankfurt scheduled to leave at 6.05 am on Saturday, was one of the flights canceled.

His colleague and he were booked on the cancelled flight to get home from Malta to Honolulu on Lufthansa. They were supposed to fly Lufthansa Malta- Frankfurt- San Francisco and change to United Airlines to Honolulu.

Both passengers had two independent booking records.

In Juergen’s case, he is a 3 million miles 1K flyer with United Airlines, having access to priority services. He was booked on a codeshare flight with Lufthansa using a paid business class ticket he bought on united.com.

Lufthansa still thanks passengers for flying.

A few hours after Lufthansa canceled the Malta Frankfurt flight, the airline’s website showed the cancellation for this PNR. Still, when clicking on quick help for alternatives, the system responded that there were no alternatives and thanked him for “flying Lufthansa.”

Another option instructed to call Lufthansa Customer Service.

The phone number for the call center in Malta on Lufthansa.com was invalid, so Juergen tried to call the 24/7 call center in Frankfurt. The recording said all day that all lines were busy and to visit the website since a human could not talk to anyone. It also again thanked for “trying to fly Lufthansa.”

Lufthansa and United are part of the Star Alliance System. A status in one airline loyalty program should be recognized across member airlines.

Unfortunately, it appears Lufthansa has its own way of interpreting this.

Lufthansa is not providing the so-called “Senator” or “Honorary Circle” access to Gold, Platinum, 1K, or Global service passengers booked through United Airlines.

About the author

Avatar of Linda Hohnholz, eTN editor

Linda Hohnholz, eTN editor

Linda Hohnholz has been writing and editing articles since the start of her working career. She has applied this innate passion to such places as Hawaii Pacific University, Chaminade University, the Hawaii Children's Discovery Center, and now TravelNewsGroup.

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