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The Scandinavian airline SAS has canceled nearly 600 scheduled flights on Sunday as the pilots' strike entered its second day, disrupting the travel plans of tens of thousands of passengers.
SAS pilots began a strike on Friday following the failure of wage negotiations, blocking about 70 percent of the company's flights and hitting some 170,000 people on the weekend alone.
"We deeply regret that our customers are affected by the current pilot strike," SAS said in a statement on Saturday, explaining the cancellation of flights for the rest of the weekend.
"Due to the strike, about 64,000 passengers will be affected by 587 canceled flights across Scandinavia".
SAS has taken action, including providing free food to passengers waiting for alternate flights at airports. The carrier, which is partly owned by the Swedish and Danish governments, said it was ready to resume negotiations but warned that responding to pilots' demands would have disastrous consequences for the company.
Swedish employers in the aviation sector said the pilots were demanding a 13% increase in wages, despite salaries already above the average of about 8,700 euros a month.
The SAS Pilot Group, a trade union representing 95% of the company's pilots in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, says the conflict is not only about salaries, but that it requires more predictable hours of work and transparent.
Analysts at Sydbank have estimated that the strike cost SAS 54 to 63 million euros a day, which would wipe out the net profit expected of the airline for the year if the strike lasted two weeks.
The strike at SAS does not affect the flights operated by its partners, which represent about 30% of departures.
The airline said it was offering passengers booked on flights made until May 1 to schedule them for free.
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