Frankfurt Airport Scraps 13% of Flights Amid Walkout Recovery
February 23, 2012, 4:40 AM ESTBy Konstantin Riffler and Alex Webb
Feb. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Frankfurt airport scrapped 13 percent of the flights scheduled for today as it builds operations after ground controllers suspended a strike in order to resume contract talks.
Carriers are canceling 169 flights of the 1,260 planned, Mike Schweitzer, a spokesman for airport operator Fraport AG, said today in a phone interview. That’s four more cancellations than yesterday. Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Europe’s second-biggest airline and the dominant carrier at Frankfurt, is dropping more than 150 flights, according to its website.
Fraport and the Gewerkschaft der Flugsicherung union plan to restart negotiations today, according to Matthias Maas, a GdF spokesman. Maas and Schweitzer declined to disclose details about the talks.
The walkout by about 200 workers who handle taxiing and parking of aircraft has disrupted flights at Frankfurt airport on six of the past eight days, including today. The GdF agreed yesterday to talks after Fraport offered negotiations as long as the strike was halted.
The series of walkouts began on Feb. 16, and the controllers halted work entirely from Feb. 20 until yesterday. The GdF is entering the talks “with an open mind,” Maas said, adding that he wasn’t immediately aware of the new terms being proposed.
Fraport was unchanged at 46 euros as of 9:26 a.m. in Frankfurt trading after declining as much as 0.8 percent. Lufthansa declined 1 percent to 10.39 euros.
Strike Cost Estimates
Lufthansa, which has been sending 1,000 text messages a day to inform passengers about the disruption, has estimated its losses from the strike at the “double-digit million level,” meaning more than 10 million euros ($13 million). Fraport estimated yesterday that its costs have totaled 6.5 million euros to 7 million euros.
Fraport has declined to accept recommendations from its own mediator, former Hamburg Mayor Ole von Beust, in the dispute.
Those terms would have amounted to wage increases by 2015 of 53 percent for apron controllers, who direct planes to their gates, and 27 percent for senior apron controllers, plus 33 percent for marshals who signal to pilots on the ground and 26 percent for traffic-management staff, who determine the position aircraft will occupy, Fraport said yesterday.
Fraport sought to maximize flights during the strike by drafting in people with ground-control qualifications from administrative posts. That helped lift the proportion of scheduled services performed from 68 percent during the Feb. 16 action to 85 percent on Feb. 21, and the figure would have risen above 90 percent had the action continued, it said yesterday.
--Editors: Tom Lavell, David Risser
To contact the reporters on this story: Konstantin Riffler in Frankfurt at kriffler@bloomberg.net; Alex Webb in Frankfurt at awebb25@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chad Thomas at cthomas16@bloomberg.net; Angela Cullen at acullen8@bloomberg.net
