Rolling Traveler

As I mentioned last week, Lufthansa was hit by a large industrial action this week, and although the airline was assuring people that flights would go ahead as planned thanks to a detailed plan of action, they didn’t really know what form the strike would take, and there was every chance there would be a great number of cancellations. In the end, the majority of flights went ahead as planned, with the main cancellations being national flights. The dispute has since been resolved, but there are still going to be flights affected over the next two weeks due to a backlog of maintenance checks, according to the airline. I had a reservation for a Dusseldorf-Wroclaw flight for this week, so I was able to see for myself how the strike was handled.

Other than the notice boards listing the cancelled flights for the day, there was nothing at check-in at Dusseldorf airport to suggest there was a problem, and the cancelled flights were only some of those going to Frankfurt and Munich. Passengers were either given train tickets or put on other flights to those cities, according to the check-in agent I talked to. We checked in, went through security as normal, and made it down to our gate with no problems either. The gate crew were on top of their job, coordinating with wheelchair assistance to get the pre-boarding passengers on and seated ahead of the crowd, and the cabin crew were their usual professional selves. I wouldn’t have known there was a strike but for one thing: as we were going through the gate, I was called back to pick something up.
I thought I’d forgotten my boarding pass stub or dropped my passport, but no, it was a sealed clear plastic package containing a sugary whole grain bar, a bottle of still mineral water, a piece of thick and gummy rye bread, and something in an orange packaging called a BiFi, which turned out to be beef jerky. Or a dried sausage. I’m still not sure which, because I decided not to try it after catching a whiff of one that another passenger had opened. Waste not want not though: I kept it and gave it to a friend to give his dogs.
This package was handed to each passenger as they boarded in place of the sandwich and drink that we would normally have been served in flight, which I probably wouldn’t have eaten anyway, because, you know, airline sandwich. All in all, I wasn’t personally inconvenienced by the strike. By all reports, the people hit hardest by the strike were Lufthansa themselves, and many national passengers, and it looks like they will continue to feel the effects over the next week or two. If anyone has any other experiences of this strike or other airline strikes, I would like to hear from you, to compare how different unions and airlines handle different types of strike.

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