(Frankfurt, DEU) - Nearly 200 flights were cancelled at Frankfurt airport, Europe's third busiest, on Tuesday as tarmac workers downed tools for the fourth day and said the strike would be extended until Friday.
Fraport, the company which owns and operates Germany's biggest airport, said that 187 flights out of a total 1,200 would be cancelled, fewer than the 240 on Monday.
The aim, as on previous strike days, was to ensure that all intercontinental take-offs and landings went ahead, Fraport said.
And it said that, with the current contingency plans in place, "we are in a position to stick it out, even if the strikes last longer."
"Safety has top priority and we can guarantee it at all times," Fraport insisted.
Earlier, the GdF air traffic workers union announced it would extend the walkouts, which began last Thursday, until Friday evening in a bid to further turn up pressure in their pay dispute.
Some 200 so-called "apron control" staff -- who direct aircraft in and out of their parking positions both in the control tower and on the tarmac -- are demanding pay rises of 25 to 50 percent, depending on a worker's grade, as well as increased bonuses and reduced working hours.
Fraport called the union to "drop its intransigent stance and return to the negotiating table immediately."
Management "is ready for talks at any time if the GdF shows a willingness to compromise and ends the strike action," a spokesman said.
Fraport, the statement said, had made concessions "on many points in the union's extremely high demands."
But in other areas, the demands were "so extremely high... that they would threaten the entire wage structure system as a whole," it said.
Frankfurt airport is Europe's third busiest after London-Heathrow and Paris Charles de Gaulle.
GdF repeatedly threatened strike action last year in a long-running wage dispute for regular air traffic controllers.
A strike was averted when the union and Germany's air safety authority DFS reached a deal in court in October.
