Lufthansa pilots end strike action

Hundreds of passengers have been hit by Lufthansa pilot strike action

FRANKFURT, Germany -- Pilots at Europe's second largest airline, Lufthansa, have settled their pay dispute, a union spokesman has said.

The union, which represents 80 percent of the airline's 4,200 pilots, had been demanding a 24 percent pay rise, which it said would put its pilots on a parity with rivals.

It is not clear what the details of the agreement are, but a joint press conference is scheduled for later on Friday.

The agreement was signed after former German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher was brought in as mediator after direct talks between the company and union broke down on May 22.

Two 24-hour strikes in May cost the airline dearly.

The first walk-out alone, on May 11, set the company back between $23 million and $32 million, the Associated Press news agency said, as hundreds of flights were cancelled

"It was Hercules' work, but it's done," said Georg Fongern, spokesman of the pilots' union Vereninigung Cockpit.

Lufthansa would not comment on the settlement, but the mediator's office confirmed both sides had reached an agreement.

The airline's shares shot up 1.06 percent to $19.38 on the back of the news.

Financial results have already been hit at Germany's biggest airline and the continent's second biggest cargo carrier.

First-quarter operating profits for Lufthansa fell 94 percent in April.

The ongoing dispute was making the achievement of obtaining flat earnings "more and more ambitious," the company's chief financial officer Karl-Ludwig Kley had said.

The airline's last reported offer to the union amounted to a 30.3 percent increase -- including performance-based pay -- in the first year of a four-year contract.

Taking away the performance-based pay, that would have amounted to a 13.6 percent pay rise, Lufthansa added.