He started his journalism career in 1992 as a freelance writer for Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Germany’s largest daily national newspaper and soon specialised in air transport. Jens joined Aviation Week and Aviation Daily in 2000 as one of the European correspondents. Later his role was expanded to cover international air transport. In 2013 he was named Managing Editor Commercial.
Jens frequently appears on radio and TV to comment on industry matters. In 2003, he received the Hugo Junkers Award of the German aviation press for his coverage of Fairchild Dornier’s bankruptcy. He was named the country’s top travel and air transport writer by the Travel Industry Club three times. Jens graduated from the Munich School of Journalism.
Following a full-day pilot strike on Monday, Lufthansa is slowly returning its operations to normal. The airline canceled 400 of its 1,800 flights on Wednesday after it was forced to slash Monday’s schedule to about 40%. The airline expects to be back to its usual schedule on Friday. Also affected were services of its low-fare affiliate Germanwings, which flies roughly two-thirds of its normal program and also wants to return to a full schedule by the end of the week.
Lufthansa was forced to cancel almost two-thirds of its flights on Monday after pilot union Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) started a planned four-day strike that was then suspended until March 8. Negotiations are to start immediately. Of the 1,800 flights typically planned daily in February, the airline managed to operate only about 800, using capacity from third-party airlines and partners such as BMI. Group subsidiaries, including Austrian and Swiss, used larger aircraft on their German routes to have the capacity for stranded Lufthansa passengers.
A bitter conflict with its mainline pilots is threatening Lufthansa’s crucial restructuring efforts, which aim to make its intra-European operation more competitive versus low-cost carriers and return the unit profitability.
