Thousands of passengers affected by pilots' strike in Germany
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Thousands of passengers are feeling the impact of a pilots strike in Germany after negotiations between the country's biggest airline Lufthansa and the union representing pilots collapsed over a long-running dispute regarding wages and early retirement benefits.
Germanwings, a subsidiary of Germany's biggest airline Lufthansa, said up to 15,000 passengers were affected by Friday's strike which started at 6 a.m. and was to last until noon local time (0400-1000 GMT).
More than a hundred flights, mostly domestic connections from airports in Cologne, Stuttgart, Duesseldorf, Dortmund, Hannover, Hamburg and Berlin, were grounded by the strike.
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The airline said on its website it was trying to rebook customers free of charge.
A three-day pilots' strike in April grounded Lufthansa and its Germanwings and Lufthansa Cargo subsidiaries.