Lufthansa pilots strike, upend airline travel

Thousands of travelers scrambled to find flights, trains, hotel rooms or rental cars on Monday after Lufthansa pilots began a four-day walkout over job security that grounded at least 800 flights and upended travel across the continent.

Deutsche Lufthansa AG quickly rushed to get a court injunction to halt the strike and send 4,000 pilots back into their cockpits before more harm was done to passengers and shareholders.

The court in Frankfurt said a decision could come as soon as Monday night.

“This strike is disproportionate,” Claudia Lange, a Lufthansa spokeswoman said. “We hope for a decision within the next 24 hours.”

The strike disrupted travel plans for some 10,000 passengers worldwide.

Albert Carles and his wife arrived at Frankfurt airport after a 14-hour flight from Vietnam and found out only after landing that their connecting flight to Marseille was canceled and trains to Paris were overbooked.

“There is no information, we are left on our own,” he told German news agency DAPD. “We have not eaten or drunk anything.”

Lufthansa, Europe’s second-biggest airline by sales, said many long-haul flights to the U.S., including New York and Denver, were canceled but it was still running many domestic flights and short-haul routes across Europe.

Other flights to the U.S. — including Newark, New Jersey, Dallas and Chicago — were running as scheduled Monday, as were flights to destinations in Africa, South America and Asia.

But the Lufthansa strike was just the tip of the travel chaos iceberg.

Also Monday, five unions representing French air traffic controllers announced a four-day strike of their own starting Tuesday that means hundreds of flights at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports will be canceled.

France’s DGAC aviation authority ordered airlines to cancel 50 percent of flights at Orly and 25 percent of flights at Charles de Gaulle.

British Airways PLC, meanwhile, faced a renewed threat of cabin crew strikes that could start next week.

And Eurostar — the main train alternative to planes between Paris, Brussels and London — suffered yet another major embarrassment. A Paris-to London train inexplicably broke down in southern England late Sunday, plunging more than 700 passengers into darkness. Passengers then had to climb down ladders onto the track to a replacement train that arrived in London about 2:30 a.m., more than four hours late.

Fears about job security were the underlying theme for all the airline work actions.

The Lufthansa pilots are concerned that cheaper crews from the company’s smaller airlines in other countries could eventually replace them. The French air traffic controllers are upset about plans to integrate European air traffic operations, leaving them to face new work rules, the loss of their civil servant benefits or even job cuts. British Airways cabin crews don’t want the company to slash the number of staff working on flights.

The Lufthansa strike, which was announced last week, is set to end Thursday at midnight but could be extended.

“The four days apparently are not enough to get Lufthansa going to find a solution with us at the negotiating table,” Alexander Gerhard-Madjidi, a spokesman for the Cockpit pilots’ union, told Bayerischer Rundfunk Radio.