BERLIN: German airline Lufthansa said it cancelled 520 flights on Saturday, leaving 58,000 passengers grounded as cabin staff kept up a strike in a long-running battle over cost cuts.

While all domestic and European flights from Frankfurt and Duesseldorf were scrapped, inter-continental services were maintained, with the exception of one connection between Duesseldorf and Newark, New Jersey, a Lufthansa spokeswoman in Frankfurt said.

The airline had booked some 1,600 hotel rooms for Friday night, mainly in Frankfurt, for its grounded passengers, though around 50 people in transit were forced to spend the night in the airport because they did not have a German visa, the spokeswoman said.

Frankfurt and Duesseldorf airports — Germany’s busiest and third-busiest airports — were hit Saturday by a walkout that began at 6am and is scheduled to run until 11pm.

Published in Dawn, November 8th, 2015

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