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About 150 Scandinavian Airlines pilots went on strike Monday to protest planned job cuts, forcing the company to cancel nearly all European flights in and out of the Danish capital.
The wildcat strike, which started at 8 a.m. local time Monday, grounded most of the carrier's flights to European destinations until midnight, airline spokeswoman Anne Bove Nielsen said. A few flights within Europe and Scandinavian Airlines' overseas flights were not affected.
Bove Nielsen could not give an exact figure for the number of canceled flights.
Representatives of the company and the pilots met Monday, but Bove Nielsen refused to give details of the talks.
She could not say whether Copenhagen flights would be able to resume Tuesday, saying "with a wildcat strike it is hard to predict the future."
The strike came after three days of bad weather with strong winds and snow that forced the airline to cancel more than 400 flights out of Copenhagen.
"Right now we haven't had time to sit down and find out how it has cost us," said Jens Langergaard, another SAS spokesman.
In Norway, a spokesman for SAS Braathens, which is owned by the SAS group, said an unusually high number of the airline's pilots called in sick on Monday.
"We cannot rule out that there is a connection between the situation in Copenhagen, where a number of pilots have started an illegal action," SAS Braathens spokesman Knut Loevstuhagen told Norwegian news agency NTB. He said between 30 and 40 flights would be affected.
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