Airlines make gradual liftoff

FLEXIBILITY: NO FIXED SHIFTS FOR CABIN CREW, PILOTS

German airline uses an ‘emergency’ timetable comparable to 1950s.

Cabin crews on standby with destinations revealed only hours before the flight, pilots put on simulators to keep up to date – an airline restarting after the pandemic is a far cry from the clockwork precision of the pre-coronavirus world.

“Flexibility” is the top priority, Lufthansa chief executive Carsten Spohr said last week, as the airline has “developed completely new procedures in flight and route planning”.

As borders slammed shut to halt virus transmission, about 90% of passenger connections at the German airline fell away, leaving an “emergency” timetable comparable to the 1950s.

Daily passengers dwindled to 3 000 from the usual 350 000.

With the peak of the crisis over in Europe, the airline is plotting its restart – and the entire operation has been forced to act more nimbly to cope.

For Lufthansa crews, the inchby-inch progress means “they have almost no fixed shifts any more, only on-call periods”, Spohr said.

“They know how quickly they have to make it to the airport and that they should be nearby. And then they get a few hours’ notice about where they’re going.”

Some flights, like the first India-bound service, have been dropped almost at the last moment for lack of landing authorisation. At the same time, “demand is far less predictable than usual”, a spokesperson for Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways said.

At Lufthansa, there have been cases where “colleagues all at once had to add a second flight in parallel” to meet high demand – including on a busy May holiday weekend, Spohr said.

“Historic data we’ve gathered over decades is useless for flight planning in the near future,” said chief financial officer Thorsten Dirks, explaining that Lufthansa’s “artificial intelligence has to be retrained” to address the altered situation.

Flight and cabin crew on standby through the period must also be kept up to date.

Some pilots have been flying simulators to stay in touch, with Etihad running courses every 45 days as 80% of its fleet was grounded in April.