Lufthansa pilots called off plans to strike at Frankfurt airport today after the airline has since clarified its existing offer concerning retirement benefits with more concrete details.
Under debate are changes in transitional retirement benefits. Lufthansa is seeking to raise the early retirement age of 55 to 65 to cuts costs and remain competitive, but pilots are fighting the change.
Yesterday Lufthansa publicized its changes, which state that starting in 2016 the airline will increase the early retirement age of individual pilots by two months for each year of service that falls short of 30 years of employment. An employee with the airline for 20 years, for example, would only be able to retire at the age of 56 and eight months. Lufthansa also said it wanted to gradually raise the average collective age at which pilots at Lufthansa's passenger airline retire to 61 from 58 by the year 2021.
The airline reiterated that all union pilots hired before Jan. 1 working at Lufthansa, Lufthansa Cargo and at Germanwings would still have access to the same transitional care package.