Lufthansa passengers must continue to prepare for cancellations and delays. The Cockpit pilots’ union is continuing its strike that began on Thursday. Individual flights at Zurich Airport are affected.
03/13/2026, 07:0403/13/2026, 07:04
Hundreds of flights are to be canceled again, especially at the Frankfurt and Munich hubs, according to information from the airports. Lufthansa does not expect a regular flight schedule again until Saturday.
Lufthansa staff are also on strike on Friday.Image: keystone
At Zurich Airport, two connections to and from Munich and one flight to and from Frankfurt will be canceled on Friday, as a spokesman for the airport said at the request of the Keystone-SDA news agency.
The striking union Cockpit (VC) had reported a high level of employee participation in the second wave of strikes. As early as February 12th, the pilots had canceled a large number of Lufthansa flights due to their collective bargaining dispute over company pensions. The effects of this were also felt in Switzerland. There were outages at Zurich, Basel and Geneva airports on Thursday.
Dispute over flight cancellations
During the current strike, Lufthansa has drawn up a special flight plan for both days of the strike, according to which at least half of the usual program should take place. For long-distance flights even 60 percent is achieved. This program is taking place as planned. The Cockpit Association contradicted this: According to their data, 70 percent of the aircraft remained on the ground until the afternoon.
According to the airport operators, around 400 of 1,165 planned take-offs and landings were canceled on the first day of the strike in Frankfurt. In Munich, 230 of around 800 flight movements were canceled. The numbers refer to all airlines; the failures are mainly attributable to Lufthansa. In Munich the number of cancellations is expected to fall to 180 on Friday.
Cityline starts again on Friday
This is due to the earlier end of the strike at the Lufthansa Cityline subsidiary, which was only supposed to go on strike for one day. The regional subsidiary takes on feeder services from smaller airports to the hubs with 30 aircraft. While the collective bargaining dispute at the regional subsidiary Cityline is about increasing salaries, the collective bargaining partners at Cargo and the core company Lufthansa are arguing about higher company pensions.
According to its own announcement, Lufthansa wanted to use larger aircraft, have Lufthansa flights operated by corporate airlines that were not on strike and use volunteer crews. There have been no changes to these plans for both days of the strike, said a company spokeswoman. According to VC, subcontractors are also used. (dab/sda/dpa)
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