THE AFRICAN COURIER. Reporting Africa and its Diaspora! The African Courier is an international magazine published in Germany to report on Africa and the Diaspora African experience. The first issue of the bimonthly magazine appeared on the newsstands on 15 February 1998. The African Courier is a communication forum for European-African political, economic and cultural exchanges, and a voice for Africa in Europe.
Lufthansa is cancelling more flights as travel operators in Germany continue to be plagued by staff shortages. Around 2,000 connections at the Frankfurt and Munich hubs will be affected until the end of August, a company spokesman said in Frankfurt on Wednesday.
This is already the third wave of flight cancellations by Lufthansa this summer. First, the airline cancelled a good 3,000 flights for the months of July and August and then cancelled another 770 connections for the week up to and including Thursday (14 July). Now another 2,000 cancellations have been added for a period of six weeks.
Especially the traffic peaks in the morning and evening should be relieved, the spokesperson explained. At these times, the ground services at the hubs are overloaded, so that aircraft have to wait and luggage is left behind.
The spokesman explained that mainly short connections to destinations within Germany or nearby foreign countries, for which there are good alternatives, would be cancelled. Flights to holiday destinations would only be cancelled in exceptional cases.
The latest news comes amid reports of passengers queuing at security for hours and being unable to collect their luggage on arrival at Germany’s largest airports and airlines. The problem is attributed to the pandemic, when thousands of members of staff were laid off as part of cost-cutting measures.
Felix Dappah
