German airline Lufthansa said yesterday it would slowly return to its normal flight schedule from today, following a pilots' strike that forced the airline to cancel about 800 flights on Monday, which effected some 10,000 passengers worldwide.

 

A German Lufthansa Airbus A340 jet taxies at Beijing Capital International Airport on February 19, 2010. [Maverick Chen / China.org.cn]

The 12 effected flights between three Chinese and two German cities would also gradually return to normal, as the planned four-day strike over job security by more than 4,000 pilots had been suspended.

Figures on the Chinese passengers affected over the past two days were not immediately available yesterday, but many disgruntled travelers chose to air their complaints on Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like microblogging service launched by China's portal giant Sina.com. According to some of the blogs, the flight cancellations, which came shortly after the Spring Festival break, was disruptive to passengers' business or travel plans.

A netizen who called himself Yizi YY said the strike forced him to switch to another Eastern Airline flight at a less desirable time and with unnecessary hassle, in order to get to Germany for work.