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German airline Lufthansa will deploy larger aircraft on domestic routes as continuing strikes across the country fuel demand in domestic air travel, a spokesman said on Friday.
The flag carrier’s domestic flights are heavily booked on Monday and Tuesday because of a strike by rail staff, the latest disruption in months of industrial action by transport and public service workers’ unions.
Most-booked routes include Frankfurt-Berlin, where additional flights are planned, as well as Munich-Hamburg and Munich-Berlin. Larger jets may also serve Hanover, where a major forestry and timber trade fair opens on Monday.
The use of a larger Airbus A321 on domestic routes would result in an increase of about 40 seats per flight. However, there will be no cancellations of other connections in favour of domestic flights, the spokesman said.
Outside the Frankfurt and Munich hubs, the Lufthansa subsidiary Eurowings is also registering a significant increase in bookings. However, the carrier does not have any additional capacity available, in part because of the already heavy holiday traffic.
Germany’s EVG trade union has called on Deutsche Bahn (DB) railway employees to join a third strike in the current round of collective bargaining over pay.
The walkout is to last from 10 pm (2000 GMT) on Sunday until midnight on Tuesday. The railway decided to completely stop long-distance traffic during this time, while very few trains in rail service Deutsche Bahn’s regional network will run either.
