Strike at German airports leaves nearly 300,000 passengers grounded

BERLIN, Feb 17 (Reuters) – The 24-hour strike announced on Friday at seven German airports will affect nearly 300,000 passengers as unionized workers insist on wage demands.

“The terminals are empty this morning,” a Hamburg airport spokesman said, adding that very few of the 32,000 affected passengers showed up.

Around 295,000 passengers are affected by the cancellation of some 2,340 flights at the airports of Bremen, Dortmund, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hanover, Munich and Stuttgart, according to the airport association ADV.

“When we look at the airport terminals this morning, it reminds us more of the worst days of coronavirus and less of a strike,” ADV’s Ralph Beisel told broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk.

German union Verdi announced the strike on Wednesday after saying that collective bargaining efforts for ground handling staff, public sector workers and airline security workers had made little progress.

“If nothing is done for salaries now, we are going to have another chaotic summer,” Verdi vice-president Christine Behle told Inforadio on Friday. “It’s about sending a very strong signal.”

The strike coincides with the 59th Munich Security Conference (MSC).

Romania’s foreign minister, who was due to arrive on one of the canceled flights, will instead fly to Austria and then make the more than four-hour trip to Munich, a spokesperson for the agency said. Romanian embassy.

(Reporting by Klaus Lauer and Lisa Jucca; Writing by Miranda Murray; Editing by Jason Neely, Editing in Spanish by José Muñoz in Gdansk)