BERLIN (AFP) – Pilots at Germany's Lufthansa worried about their jobs voted on Wednesday to stage their biggest strike since 2001, adding to turbulence in a European industry already under pressure from all sides.
More than 93 percent of the 4,500 pilots at the airline, one of Europe's "big three" with Air France-KLM and British Airways, opted to stage four days of industrial action starting at midnight on Monday (2300 GMT or 6 p.m. EST on Sunday).
Talks collapsed in acrimony in December, with the Cockpit union demanding a 6.4-percent pay increase and commitments that pilots would keep their jobs as the firm shifts passengers to cheaper foreign affiliates.
The airline said that the union was also making a demand for greater say on management decisions, which "cannot be accepted."
The strikes will also affect Lufthansa Cargo, one of the world's biggest freight carriers, and Germanwings.
The firm, which operated around 800,000 flights last year, said it has set up a hotline and is allowing customers to change bookings free of charge, or to give them train tickets.
Lufthansa, which employs around 100,000 people, was hit nine years ago by the worst strike in its history that caused travel misery for passengers and cost the firm millions of euros.
"It's going to be around the same scale this time," the Rheinische Post cited an official at Cockpit as saying.
"Small warning strikes are insufficient. The differences are too fundamental this time."