I'm a flight attendant for Lufthansa. Cuts have led to total chaos — and ruined my personal life.
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- Airlines and airports are struggling to cope with returning passengers.
- A Lufthansa flight attendant spoke to Insider anonymously about the current travel chaos.
- He said that the airline is on the verge of collapse and that it has caused its own problems.
This is an edited, translated version of an article that originally appeared on July 1, 2022. It is an as-told-to essay based on a conversation with a Lufthansa employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
I'm in my mid-30s and I've been a flight attendant for Lufthansa, a German airline, for 11 years. I've never experienced such chaos in all my career as I have in the past few weeks.
To sum up the situation, Lufthansa is on the verge of collapse.
If things continue like this, the whole system will go down like a house of cards, and I don't think the company can fix the issues any time soon.
The problems are self-inflicted. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the airline made big cutbacks on training for its cabin crew.
Normally, even fully trained flight attendants have to undergo a "refresher course" each year. This involves reviewing new safety regulations on evacuations or special features of a particular aircraft that they're on board, among other things.
Lufthansa has mostly suspended these refresher courses, meaning some flight attendants don't have valid licenses and therefore cannot board the aircraft.
This, combined with the higher sickness rates due to COVID-19 and the constant demanding workload for flight attendants, is bringing the licensed workforce to its knees.
There aren't enough flight attendants to cover the shortfalls, which is something that has affected me personally. My on-call periods — when I'm assigned to a flight if someone suddenly becomes unavailable — have doubled. I now have two on-call periods each month, both lasting five days.
In the past, being on call didn't necessarily mean you were needed; it was more of a precautionary measure. These days, I can be 100% certain that I'll get a call telling me that I need to cover someone during my on-call periods.
The problem goes even further: I can't even rely on the flights Lufthansa assigns to me in advance.
I often get on the first plane in the morning, but I don't know which will be my last flight, where it will go, or how long I'll have to stay there.
An overnight stay in another city can quickly turn into two nights, which disrupts my schedule and affects my availability for other flights.
Since the chaos began, my private life has been nonexistent; I simply can't plan anything anymore.
The result of all this is delays, cancellations, and a lot of angry travelers; and their misery continues even after they've boarded.
Due to the lack of staff, there aren't just problems at security and check-in, but also with onboard services like catering — there's either not enough food, or no food at all. Recently during a flight, customers approached us in the kitchen area to ask if there was anything left to eat. We can no longer fulfill our roles as hosts.
The situation makes me angry and sad at the same time. As a flight attendant, I love my job, but it's unbearable to see such a renowned company fail across the board due to bad decisions the upper echelons made.
Lufthansa told Insider that bottlenecks and staff shortages were affecting the entire aviation industry.
Lufthansa said it had implemented numerous measures and was recruiting additional staff "to ensure the greatest possible stability of the flight schedule and thus give passengers more security when planning."
Flight-safety strikes, weather events and, in particular, an increased COVID-19 infection rate have strained the system, the airline said.
Regarding training cutbacks, Lufthansa said the decisions to requalify flight attendants were made based on the "reduced working hours at the time" and the assumed growth rate. "Currently, from a planning perspective, we can ensure the operation of our fleets," the company said in a statement.
Lufthansa added that flight cancellations and increased COVID-19 rates could lead to last-minute schedule changes and their on-call procedures had to be adjusted to account for this.
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