Cabin staff at Lufthansa said today they had reached a wage agreement with the airline for 19,000 flight attendants after months of negotiations and a strike that left thousands of passengers stranded.
The agreement with cabin union UFO includes a 16.5% wage increase in three stages over 36 months, starting from January retroactively, in addition to a €3,000 inflation compensation payment.
"We can now be very satisfied with the result," UFO chief negotiator Harry Jaeger said in a statement.
Since the start of negotiations in November last year, UFO has demanded 15% more pay over a period of 18 months, a one-time payment of €3,000 to adjust for inflation and higher bonuses.
Some 20,000 UFO staff at Lufthansa and subsidiary CityLine stopped work for a day last month, causing around 1,000 flights cancellations, affecting 120,000 passengers.
UFO said negotiations for workers at Lufthansa subsidiaries CityLine and Discover Airlines were ongoing but were heading for an agreement.
Last month, the Verdi union agreed pay increase for Lufthansa ground staff after hammering out details of a deal to avert further strikes ahead of the busy Easter travel season.
Lufthansa suspends Tehran flights
Germany's Lufthansa has today extended a suspension of its flights to Tehran on Thursday with the Middle East on alert for Iranian retaliation for a suspected Israeli air strike on Iran's embassy in Syria.
Lufthansa and its subsidiary Austrian Airlines are the only two Western carriers flying into Tehran, which is mostly served by Turkish and Middle Eastern airlines.
The region and the US have been on alert for an attack by Iran since April 1, when Israeli warplanes are suspected to have bombed the Iranian embassy compound in Syria.
Lufthansa said it had suspended flights to and from Tehran until probably April 13, extending its suspension by two days, to avoid its crew having to disembark to spend the night in the Iranian capital.
Austrian Airlines, which runs a direct Vienna-Tehran service six times a week, was still scheduled to operate its flight into Tehran today, according to its website and FlightRadar24.
