Lufthansa pilots to strike Wednesday over pay row: union

The German pilots' union called a new strike on Wednesday against airline Lufthansa over a long-smouldering pay dispute, while its subsidiary Eurowings will be hit by a ground crew strike on Tuesday.

"The management's constant refusal to accept a reasonable increase in pilots' salaries is not acceptable and finally led to a breakdown in negotiations," a Vereinigung Cockpit union statement said on Monday.

The pilots are demanding a pay rise of an average of 3.66 percent per year, retroactive for the past five years.

The union says pilots have endured a wage freeze over that time and suffered a "significant loss of purchasing power" due to inflation, while Lufthansa has made billions in profits.

This will be the union's 14th strike since April 2014.

Lufthansa had labelled the decision to strike "incomprehensible" and "not the right way", saying it had offered the union the chance to take the dispute before independent mediators.

It had offered a 2.5 percent wage hike to pilots of Lufthansa, Lufthansa Cargo and Germanwings.

The Verdi union meanwhile called for a strike on Tuesday by the cabin and ground staff of Eurowings for salary increases and improved working conditions.

2015 was an annus horribilis for Lufthansa, with repeated walkouts costing it hundreds of millions of euros.

Europe's largest airline has fought disputes with pilots, cabin staff and ground crew over the past two years as it tries to cut costs in the face of no-frills competitors in the EU on one hand and Gulf nations' airlines on the other.

It reached a deal with 19,000 cabin staff in July, after a week-long strike in November 2015, the longest in Lufthansa history, forced it to cancel 4,600 flights that impacted more than half a million passengers.