Austrian Airlines cancels 150 flights scheduled for Friday

Austrian Airlines is cancelling around 150 flights scheduled for Friday due to an originally planned company meeting, the carrier said in Vienna on Tuesday.

Although the works council of on-board staff, a body representing employee's interests, and the trade union have postponed their meeting indefinitely, the airline had to stick to the planned cancellations for logistical reasons, a company spokeswoman said.

The cancellations will affect around 12,800 passengers, who have already been informed of the outages.

In total, the airline - a subsidiary of German carrier Lufthansa - had around 300 flights planned on Friday.

A week ago Friday, almost 140 flights were cancelled at Austrian Airlines due to another such meeting and a spontaneous strike action.

The meetings were called to discuss stalled talks on a collective bargaining agreement for a total of 3,500 cabin and cockpit crew members.

After a good economic year for the aviation industry, the Vida union is demanding that employees also benefit in the form of salary increases.

Austrian Airlines said the company had offered a salary increase of 4.5% and was discussing one-off payments and better profit-sharing.

"The works council and the Vida union should not cause more damage, but rather find common solutions at the negotiating table," the company spokeswoman said.