Discover Airlines: Namibia flights on schedule so far despite strikes

Namibia holidaymakers who want to fly to the land of endless horizons with Discover Airlines these days can breathe a sigh of relief. Flights to and from Windhoek have so far taken place as planned despite strikes at the holiday airline. Unions had called on flying personnel to go on strike from yesterday until Friday.

Yesterday morning, the Lufthansa office in Windhoek had already given assurances that its subsidiary Discover would operate all flights scheduled for the evening. According to the flight schedule, these were two flights from Frankfurt to Windhoek and one flight from Windhoek to Frankfurt.

In the course of the evening, the next message came with a view to today: "[...] our flights (outbound and inbound) to WDH are expected to operate as scheduled." In other words: the flight to Windhoek and the two return flights to Frankfurt scheduled for this evening.

Discover wants to announce by this evening whether the three flights planned for tomorrow evening will take place (two FRA - WDH, one WDH - FRA). Tomorrow evening, the flights on the last day of the strike will be finalised. Every passenger can check the status of their flight on the Lufthansa Group website.

Flight cancellations are limited

The industrial action at the holiday airline appears to have resulted in only a few flight cancellations so far. Apparently Discover has been able to redistribute flights to other airlines in the Lufthansa Group.

However, the organisational effort is apparently enormous. According to Discover, there were a total of 270 flights between Tuesday and Friday. The strike ends at midnight on Friday.

The industrial action was called by the pilots' union 'Cockpit' and the 'Ufo' union, which represents the flight attendants. Their aim is to enforce their own collective labour agreements for cockpit and cabin crew. Discover had previously concluded a collective agreement with the rival union Ver.di for the service industries.

Sven-Eric Stender