Strikes began on March 18 over a conflict surrounding Lufthansa's plans to scrap its early retirement scheme, under which its pilots were entitled to early retirement at age 55 whilst continuing to receive 60% of their regular pay until the statutory retirement age of 65. Airport owners Fraport Group said that flight cancellations led to reductions in belly capacity in the important intercontinental segment.
In the first quarter of the 2015, cargo traffic dropped 2% to 511,355 tonnes at Frankfurt, and another leading German gateway, Munich airport, said it had also been affected by the strike. However Munich airport's first quarter figures of 74,000 tonnes of airfreight demonstrated a year-on-year increase of roughly 8%, despite the difficulties. The strikes also had minimal effect on passenger traffic, which rose 2.5% year-on-year at Frankfurt airport, reaching 4.6m.
