Over half a million passengers are expected to be affected by a major 24-hour strike across most of Germany's airports.

More than half a million people are facing travel disruption at German airports on Monday where a 24-hour strike has led to thousands of flight cancellations in a dispute about workers' pay.

At Frankfurt, the country's busiest airport, operator Fraport said no passengers would be able to board and that disruptions would "almost certainly" affect transit travel, according to German daily Bild. Airports in Bremen, Cologne, Dortmund, Duesseldorf, Hamburg, Hanover, Leipzig, Munich and Stuttgart were also affected.