BERLIN – Thousands of passengers are feeling the impact of a pilots ****** in Germany after negotiations between the country’s biggest ******* Lufthansa and the union representing pilots collapsed over a long-running dispute regarding wages and early retirement benefits.

Germanwings, a subsidiary of Germany’s biggest ******* Lufthansa, said up to 15,000 passengers were affected by Friday’s ****** which started at 6 a.m. and was to last until noon local time (0400-1000 GMT).

More than a hundred flights, mostly domestic connections from airports in Cologne, Stuttgart, Duesseldorf, Dortmund, Hannover, Hamburg and Berlin, were grounded by the ******.

The ******* said on its website it was trying to rebook customers free of charge.

A three-day pilots’ ****** in April grounded Lufthansa and its Germanwings and Lufthansa Cargo subsidiaries.