“The airline’s board was not responsive to our demands so we decided to go ahead with the strike,” Houmani said.

“Almost 23 scheduled MEA’s flights were halted due to the strike, and 5,000 passengers were affected by it,” said Mohammad Hout, the airline’s chairman.

Only two Middle East Airlines flights will land at the Beirut Airport today, one coming from Africa through the Lagos-Abidjan-Accra route, and the other arrives from the French Capital-France. The LPA agreed to keep those flights running in sake of passengers waiting in the duty free of the two airports.

The LPA said that the pilots seek to get back some of the benefits that they lost when the company was financially struggling in 2001 including additional annual paid leaves, and higher salaries for new pilots. “Today, the company is making profits, last year it made a net profit of $105 million, we contributed to this profit… so we want some of our of rights back,” said Houmani.

The strike will end on Friday at the same time.

The LPA head, said that the pilots will resume similar moves next week if the MEA-board does not respond to the demands.