Business travellers flying on Lufthansa this week have faced considerable disruption as a result of a strike by the pilots' union Vereinigung Cockpit (VC).
The strike was originally scheduled for 24 hours on Wednesday but has subsequently been extended to Thursday and now to Friday.
The airline, which calls the strikes and the union's reaction "completely incomprehensible", says some 1,800 flights on Wednesday and Thursday have already been cancelled, with more than 215,000 passengers affected. The union is on strike over wages and collective bargaining agreements.
Bettina Volkens, chief officer corporate human resources and legal affairs at Lufthansa Group, said: "VC's demand for an increase in compensation by over 20 percent is far greater than increases other groups of employees have received. It is not understandable why the union is demanding the biggest raise for the group of employees that is already paid the most."
The unions demand comes in the wake of results for the first nine months of the year, which showed that revenues were down by 1.8% from €24.30 billion to €23.87 billion. However, earnings were up by 40.1% to €2.33 billion up from €1.66 billion in the same period last year. Adjusted EBIT, the airline's key forecasting indicator, remains at near record levels.
Our chart this week looks at Lufthansa's share price since the beginning of the year compared to its key competitors. Lufthansa is shown in blue, Air France KLM in green, IAG (parent of British Airways and Iberia) in orange and easyJet in red.
.jpg "lha share chart (002)")
Lufthansa says the main reasons for its decline since the beginning of the year are "the tense geopolitical situation, the Brexit vote and the following profit warnings by numerous airlines, whereby the share prices of key competitors mostly fell by even more in the same period".
The Brexit effect is clear at the end of June on all these shares while Lufthansa's stock has recovered since the announcement of its healthy results. However, the pilots' strike has started to have an effect. However, the German airline's share performance remains ahead of its main rivals.