As a result of the delay in delivery: Lufthansa pilots were given a license for the wrong aircraft

There is a shortage of well-trained workers throughout the economy. Lufthansa is also facing bottlenecks. For example with flight attendants. According to a message from a cabin crew representative, long-haul flights regularly take off with fewer crew members than actually planned.

It is said that in the last quarter of last year, there were “regular crew reductions of up to minus three”. There are reports that there are fears that things will get worse in the summer. On the other hand, Carsten Spohr, Chairman of the Lufthansa Group, sounds cautiously confident. “We don't have anywhere near the level of productivity, even among our crews, as we had in 2019.” But the focus was on quality and stability.

“There are a lot of planes that are constantly late.”

It therefore assumes a “significantly more stable operation,” as the CEO said last week when presenting the annual figures. “We put temporary barriers in the system,” Spohr says. This affects aircraft, but also their crews.

However, there is currently another problem at Lufthansa. It also results from delivery delays at Airbus and Boeing. “When you have a lot of different planes constantly arriving and being late, you have the added problem of having a lot of crews on the wrong plane.”

Flights between Frankfurt and Munich

Lufthansa has already trained and licensed a triple-digit number of pilots for the Boeing 787. “And now we don't have any aircraft to deploy our colleagues.” Therefore, some might travel “back and forth from Frankfurt to Munich” “so that colleagues could at least be used regularly and get their licenses.”

Lufthansa will also loan some Dreamliner crews to sister airline Austrian Airlines in the summer. The Lufthansa chief said the problem would return to normal over the course of the year.