In Lufthansa's so-called flight tracker, the Ukrainian city of Donetsk is assigned to the state of Russia. A passenger on a Lufthansa flight from Osaka to Munich noticed this in the on-board information system - and made a video of it. It shows how the city of Donetsk, lying in the Ukraine, is displayed on the screen after selecting "Donetsk, Russia" from a list of city names.
The Ukrainian diplomat Alexei Makeyev then posted the video in the short message service Twitter and asked Lufthansa for correction. Against the background of the conflict in Ukraine, the mapping in the map could be understood as political partisanship.
"We are sorry"
Prorussian separatists proclaimed the internationally unrecognized Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics a few years ago. The Ukrainian diplomat acknowledged that there was also a Russian city of Donetsk in the region, but the Lufthansa card clearly deals with the Ukrainian metropolis.
@Lufthansa flight, but one of the @MFA_Ukraine colleagues shared this video aboard @lufthansa flight from Osaka to Munich. Donetsk on the map is Ukraine, nowadays occupied by Russia. Would you please correct it, @ Lufthansa! pic.twitter.com/N52sjprGIx
- Oleksii Makeiev (@Makeiev) November 18, 2019Ukraine also lost control of Donetsk in a 2014 war against separatists. Peace talks are about a possible special status for the contested regions. In three weeks, a meeting in the so-called Normandie format is planned in Paris. There, Ukraine and Russia, under the mediation of Germany and France, seek to take further steps to settle the conflict. Accession to Russian territory - desired by parts of the population there - is not in sight.
Lufthansa has already responded, distancing itself from the assignment and apologized. "We are sorry," said a company spokeswoman in Frankfurt. The error is contained in a purchased software of a US manufacturer, which was promptly asked for an update. The software was installed exclusively in Airbus A 350 aircraft.