The walkout, which started at 4am, affected around 8,000 travellers as dozens of flights were cancelled.
One traveller tweeted a photo of the departures board showing the cancelled flights.
But the possibility of another strike on Saturday was averted, after local authorities in the canton of Geneva who own the airport, intervened.
An agreement was made with the striker’s union to delay the wage freeze for at least a year and a joint commission was established.
“We’re having more and more difficulty simply getting wages indexed to the cost of living. So obviously, in such a context, attacking salary mechanisms and therefore lowering them, when the company is making a profit, obviously provokes resistance, and staff have no other solution,” said Pierre-Yves Maillard, the president of the Swiss Trade Union.
But Pierre Bernheim, president of Geneva Airport, said: “I’m sad because they are taking passengers, who may have saved money for a long time, hostage.”
Although very disrupted, air traffic has been partially resumed, bringing some relief to passengers who, in Switzerland, are not accustomed to this type of situation.
Inflation dropped slightly in the eurozone the EU statistics agency Eurostat announced on Friday from 6.1% to 5.5%.
It’s the first strike at the airport, which is Switzerland’s second-busiest, since it opened in 1919. Around 18 million passengers used it last year.
Source: Euronews