According to reports, Germany may encounter air traffic chaos on Thursday, as a union has called for a six-hour strike owing to payments and work conditions.

Also, around 2,500 flights may be cancelled if the strike, planned to start at 6 am, continues, though there is a possibility of it being diverted, as the air traffic control authority applied for a court injunction to halt it, and the authority may file for ‘arbitration’, hence any action may be postponed for weeks.

The German Travel Association has warned that the strike would cause major upsets at the peak of the holiday season, as Jürgen Büchy, the President of the association, said: “The wage dispute should be solved at the negotiating table and shouldn’t hit air travelers who need to make business trips or start their well-deserved vacations”.

However, Germany’s air traffic controllers have a starting pay of around €90,000 and demanded a wage raise of 6.5 % for 12 months, while the German air traffic control authority, DFS, has offered an increase of 3.2%, including just one payment this year and a raise by at most another 2 % in the coming year.

Moreover, in recent years, it’s been reported that DFS has not recruited enough new workers, which creates more burdens for the country’s roughly 2,000 air traffic controllers, who are required to put in extra hours.