Germany’s Lufthansa will not give in to pilots who began a two-day walkout yesterday and threatened further strikes in their long-running dispute over cost cuts, retirement benefits and pay, the airline said.

Lufthansa was forced to cancel 84 of about 170 long-haul flights planned from Frankfurt, Munich and Duesseldorf, expects several hundred cancellations today and was told by pilots’ union Vereinigung Cockpit that further industrial action could be taken.

“We cannot rule out further strikes this week,” union spokesman Markus Wahl said at Frankfurt airport yesterday. “Strikes are possible in the following weeks as well.”

The pilots’ 13th strike inside 18 months drew a defiant response from Germany’s largest airline.

“We are determined... The pilots are going about this the wrong way,” a Lufthansa spokeswoman said.

Relations between management and Vereinigung Cockpit soured last week after the breakdown of talks aimed at resolving a dispute that initially centred on retirement benefits but has since escalated to encompass Lufthansa’s plans to expand low-cost operations under its Eurowings brand.

The strikes have cost Lufthansa about €100 million so far this year.

Yesterday’s action affected long-haul passenger and cargo flights out of Germany and a 24-hour walkout today targets short-haul Lufthansa and Germanwings flights.

Lufthansa is trying to cut costs to better compete with budget rivals in Europe. Pilots have offered concessions, including a proposed increase in the average retirement age to 60 and a commitment to look at ways to reduce costs to a level comparable with easyJet. But they have also demanded that the company stops moving jobs out of Germany as it seeks to expand low-cost operations.