Everything could get worse

A strike would hit the group in an already extremely tense situation. And both companies and customers in the main holiday season. Even without a labor dispute, there have been delays and postponements of flights at Lufthansa and in the entire industry for weeks. There is a lack of staff on the apron and at the security checkpoints. Many gave up their usually only moderately paid jobs during the pandemic and switched to other industries such as food retail.

The airport operator Fraport alone wants to fill around 1000 jobs for Frankfurt and is struggling with a tight job market. Hardly any of those who left or had to leave during the pandemic want to return. “Especially not after health experts are warning more and more loudly about a new corona wave in autumn,” says an aviation manager.

According to estimates by the airport association ADV, there is a shortage of around 20 percent of the ground staff at airports alone. According to calculations by the employee representatives, there are around 5,500 employees. Long waiting times at check-in and canceled or rebooked flights – the long-awaited vacation trip is becoming a torture more and more often.

Mutual finger pointing in the industry

The first mutual accusations of blame are loud. For the airlines, it is above all the airports, the ground service providers and the security companies that mess up the restart after the pandemic. But everyone in the fragmented aviation process chain is currently having problems.

The airlines too. In view of the short-term and enormously rapid increase in demand for tickets, Lufthansa sold flights that were later found to have neither equipment nor crew, according to pilots and cabin crew, for example. As early as mid-2020, there were urgent warnings about exactly such a situation, says Daniel Kassa Mbuambi, chairman of the cabin union UFO.

A restart and an associated rapid increase in the flight program can only succeed with enough staff. “However, the LH Group was so busy identifying and reducing excess personnel with reference to the corona crisis that the time of re-entry was lost from sight,” Kassa Mbuambi continues.

And that leads to unpleasant scenes for travelers and staff. A captain said he had to explain to passengers who had just boarded that the luggage that was just being unloaded from the plane was not theirs. It was baggage from the previous flight that could not be completely unloaded. “You will probably fly today without your luggage because it can no longer be loaded,” he then had to tell his passengers, says the pilot. For someone who was on the way to a cruise tour, for example, it was bitter. Because once the ship has cast off, no more luggage is delivered.

Lufthansa does not want to let the UFO depiction of mistakes in human resources policy stand. The 900 short-haul flights that the group canceled in July would be canceled because the “system partners”, such as the airports, had signaled that they would not be able to cope with the planned workload, a spokesman explains. No flight had to be canceled due to a lack of crews.

>>Read about it: Airline stocks: Staff shortage chokes hopes of recovery from Corona

However, it is conceded that the staffing level at “Hansa” is also tight. Training capacities for pilots, who have to be trained regularly in order to obtain their license, are scarce. One reason for this, according to information from company insiders, is the voluntary severance program for pilots that the group launched last year.

The management had expected up to 250 pilots who would accept this offer. But this number was already reached within the first few minutes in which the offer was online internally. In the end, around 400 cockpit employees used the severance payment, including many with extensive flight experience who also work as trainers.

In order to remedy the bottleneck, the Lufthansa management has now agreed with some to stay beyond July 31st. Nevertheless, some pilots fear that Lufthansa will run into a training bottleneck from August, which could further increase the problems in flight operations. A concern that has not yet been shared by the company.

In view of the tense situation, UFO representatives are irritated by the management’s idea of ​​lending cabin staff to the subsidiary Swiss for several months. She is struggling with massive staff shortages. This is about crew members who have not been on duty for a long time and therefore do not currently have a license.

Due to all the effort to downsize, Lufthansa clearly failed to license the remaining colleagues adequately, complains Kassa Mbuambi. “The fact that Lufthansa now wants to loan staff from its own cabin, which is currently under enormous demand, to a possibly even more undermanned Swiss cabin is an extremely unsatisfactory solution for a self-inflicted, foreseeable and avoidable problem.” as possible so as not to aggravate the workload of the cabin crew.

The current situation is also fueling collective bargaining conflicts. The high workload coupled with the sharp rise in inflation could result in a wave of strikes in aviation in the coming months. Easyjet had to cope with a strike at the airport in Berlin on Friday last week, which Verdi had called for. More could follow, according to the service union.

Airport staff recently went on strike at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. At the Scandinavian airline SAS, the pilots have announced industrial action for the end of June. If the collective bargaining partners at Lufthansa do not succeed in finding a solution in the coming days, it could be a busy summer.
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