Flight chaos: Lufthansa cancels 33,000 flights - also because many pilots are “extremely” ill 

Created: 12/26/2021, 1:35 PM

Lufthansa canceled several intercontinental flights over Christmas because too many pilots called in sick.

© Silas Stein / dpa

Lufthansa has to cancel flights precisely at Christmas because too many pilots have called in sick.

But it won't get any better in the New Year either.

There will be 33,000 fewer flights than planned in early 2022.

Frankfurt / Main - At Lufthansa * so many pilots called in sick that the first intercontinental flights had to be canceled.

From December 23 to 26, connections across the North Atlantic to Boston, Houston and Washington, for example, will be affected, a company spokesman said on Thursday.

It is in this traffic area that passengers can most easily be rebooked.

A return flight to Japan has also been canceled.

Lufthansa: 33,000 fewer flights in winter

And it doesn't look any better in the New Year either. Because of the spread of the Omikron variant, Lufthansa wants to cancel 33,000 flights after Christmas. That said, CEO Carsten Spohr of the

. He referred to the new travel restrictions and the uncertainty * of passengers: "From mid-January to February we are seeing a sharp drop in bookings." That is why Lufthansa would have to cancel 33,000 flights or around ten percent in the winter flight schedule. 

In this context, Spohr criticized the EU rules on take-off and landing rights, so-called slots.

"Due to the weak demand in January, we would have reduced even more flights. But we have to carry out 18,000 additional, unnecessary flights in winter just to secure our take-off and landing rights," he told the FAS.

A company spokesman said of the sick leave: “We planned with a very large buffer.

But that's not enough for the extremely high sickness rate. ”He did not want to speculate about a connection with the Corona variant Omikron, since Lufthansa was not informed about the type of illness.

First, the portal “aero.de” reported on the staff shortages, which can only be partially met with volunteers.

Affected is the sub-fleet of long-haul Airbus A330 / A340 aircraft, for which we are urgently looking for replacement pilots for the period up to the beginning of January.

According to “aero.de”, the company warns in an internal circular: “Now, due to the increased disease rate, we are no longer able to manage all the trips.

The crew dispatcher is already working on scenarios to thin out the flight plan. ”In addition to the sickness reports, quarantine obligations * after certain flights make personnel planning more difficult.

Lufthansa: Tough negotiations with the pilots' union

Tight negotiations are currently underway between the pilots' union Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) and the Lufthansa Group about the future cost structure of the parent company Lufthansa.

This should shrink in favor of more cost-effective platforms such as Eurowings Discover, which would inevitably cost high-paying jobs at Lufthansa.

Contracts were mutually terminated, so that strikes are theoretically possible again from the summer.

Only recently, the Lufthansa Group announced that it had refined the existing emergency concepts and made them more flexible during the Corona * crisis.

You always have reserves in the background, said a company spokesman with a view to the Omikron * variant.

In Europe, the Christmas air traffic has fully started.

In particular, the direct flight providers Easyjet (+41 percent compared to the previous week) and Wizz Air (+75 percent) significantly expanded their offerings in the week before Christmas (December 16-22), according to figures from the flight safety organization Eurocontrol.

Wizz, SAS and Ryanair also offered more connections than in the same week of the pre-crisis year 2019. Lufthansa is a long way from that, with 21 percent fewer flights than two years ago.

In the short term, she only expanded her program by 1 percent.