Germany's Deutsche Lufthansa scrapped about 70 of its 2,000 daily flights on Tuesday as thousands of ground and cabin staff struck over pay for a second day. The routes affected were short-haul services with high frequencies, enabling it to switch passengers to other flights, a Lufthansa spokesman said. No long-haul services had been hit so far, he added.

The open-ended strike by about 5,000 members of the Verdi services union began on Monday and affected Germany's largest airports, including Frankfurt. Verdi cabin crew representative Mirco Vorwerk told Reuters Television he expected the impact of the strike to grow in coming days.

"We have a great deal of support from our colleagues across all areas of the business," Vorwerk said. Verdi, which represents some 50,000 ground and cabin staff at Lufthansa, wants an immediate 9.8 percent pay rise. Lufthansa is offering 6.7 percent over 21 months and a one-off payment.

Ninety-one percent of union members backed the strike in a ballot. Lufthansa repeated calls for the union to resume talks to bring the strike to an end as quickly as possible, though the spokesman would not say whether it was considering making a new pay offer. "Lufthansa is willing to talk," he said. Analysts estimate a day's strike costs the airline around 5 million euros ($7.87 million).

"The longer the strike goes on and the more flights are cancelled, the more the negative impact on the shares will be," one trader said. Shares in Lufthansa were 1.5 percent lower at 14.76 euros by 1337 GMT, when the German DAX market index was down 0.5 percent. The rival UFO union, the dominant union for cabin crew, is not taking part in the dispute.

Copyright Reuters, 2008