FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) - The strike by flight personnel at Lufthansa subsidiary Discover Airlines has begun. This was announced by the Vereinigung Cockpit pilots' union (VC) on Friday. On the flight schedule for the morning, three flights of the airline on strike were canceled, namely to Cancun in Mexico and to the Canary Islands destinations of Fuerteventura and Tenerife. Return flights from the islands were also canceled.

The airline had only announced that it wanted to get as many passengers as possible to their destinations. A spokeswoman did not provide any further details. The company has already returned ten flights that it was supposed to fly for its parent company Lufthansa in Munich on Friday. Lufthansa wanted to make the connections elsewhere. In principle, only departures from Germany are subject to the strike, which may also have consequences for connecting flights.

The Vereinigung Cockpit pilots' union has called on its members to go on a full-day strike. This was later joined by the cabin crew union Ufo with a 24-hour warning strike without prior ballot. At issue are the first collective wage agreements at the vacation airline, which was only founded two and a half years ago and currently has 24 aircraft. The cooperation between pilots and flight attendants is intended to make it more difficult for the company to find sufficient staff for the flights, according to union circles.

The Lufthansa Group's vacation airline was initially launched in the coronavirus summer of 2021 under the name "Eurowings Discover" and later renamed "Discover Airlines". Discover is intended to be more cost-effective than the Lufthansa core brand and compete with vacation airlines such as Condor. The company currently has 24 aircraft./ceb/DP/jha