Germany's main air carrier Deutsche Lufthansa canceled another 78 flights from its total of 2000 per day on Wednesday as thousands of ground and cabin personnel continued their strike over higher wages for the third day.

In a company statement, Europe's second-biggest airline mentioned the fact that the mainly European and domestic flights would be affected and the long-haul flights also began to be suffer because of the strike. Lufthansa said it will cancel some long-haul flights for the first time during the strike including three return services from Frankfurt and one from Munich.

The Cologne, Germany-based air carrier said the largest work stoppages occurred on big airports such as Frankfurt, Hamburg and the capital Berlin. The company had to cancel flights to and from New York's Kennedy airport, Calcutta, Calgary and Chicago although yesterday company spokesman Patrick Meschenmoser assured clients that no long-haul services would be affected. A Lufthansa spokesman estimated that the total number of canceled flights equals 4% of Lufthansa's daily scheduled flights.

As much as 5000 ground staff went on strike, ver.di trade union said. The strike began on Monday as workers demanded a pay rise of almost 10 percent over the next year, while Lufthansa offered a rise of 6.7 percent over 21 months, plus a one-off payment.

"We made a really substantial offer to ver.di, and ver.di decided to leave the table and abandon the talks. We say come back. We're open to dialogue, we're open to discussion, and we really ask ver.di to come back to the table to negotiate again," the Lufthansa spokesman said in a statement according to CNN.

UFO, the rival and dominant union for cabin crew, is not involved in the dispute.