Dortmund (dpa / lnw) - Anyone who has booked a flight to or from Dortmund Airport must look for alternatives this Friday if possible. The Verdi union has called on public sector workers to go on a day-long warning strike. The strike should begin early in the morning (3 a.m.) and end on Saturday (3 a.m.), the union said. Verdi is thus expanding the collective bargaining dispute in the public sector.
According to the airport, 18 take-offs and 19 landings were scheduled for Friday. According to Thursday, most of these flights will be diverted, the others will be cancelled. Travelers should contact their airline or tour operator to find out about the status of their booked flight and, if possible, not even come to the airport, as an airport spokeswoman said.
Particularly annoying for passengers: the website of Dortmund Airport was probably paralyzed for hours by a hacker attack on Thursday. Flight operations are not affected by this, the spokeswoman said. "These are separate systems," she emphasized. Other German airports were also affected by failures.
Verdi has announced that it intends to shut down a total of seven German airports on Friday. In addition to Dortmund, the airports in Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Hanover and Bremen are also to be struck. Three collective bargaining conflicts are being fought out at the airports: in addition to the public service, there are local negotiations for ground handling services and a collective bargaining round for aviation security, in which negotiations are being held nationwide. However, the latter two conflicts do not play a role at Dortmund Airport, as Kirsten Rupieper, Verdi trade union secretary for Westphalia, explained.
