At the age of 14, Karl Brandes (left) acquired his first pilot's license – for glider pilots. Today, he is the chief pilot of Lufthansa Airline – and advertises for the job in the cockpit. © Oliver Roesler/Lufthansa
The dream of flying - Lufthansa at Munich Airport hopes that it will come true even more. Here's how to do it.
Airport – Karl-Hermann Brandes has a direct view of the southern runway of Munich Airport from his office at the airport. When there is a foehn wind, the Chief Operation Officer, the top manager of all operational areas at Lufthansa Airline, also sees the mountains – and then regularly goes into raptures: about aviation in general and the profession of a pilot.
The 57-year-old himself has a pilot's licence and regularly sits in the cockpit of an A 320. At the age of 14 he got his glider pilot's license, later his motorized pilot's license. Now the passionate pilot wants to pass on the fascination of flying - out of passion, but also because Lufthansa urgently needs new employees after Corona, even in the cockpit.
At the Munich hub alone, Kranich-Linie has 26 long-haul and 70 short-haul aircraft. "We have about 1500 pilots," explains Brandes. Too little for future challenges. "Our goal is to hire about 300 new pilots per year, both in Munich and Frankfurt."
Not an easy task, especially since the Munich native believes "that one or the other may not even know that piloting is exactly the right profession for him". But who is suitable?
"The prerequisites are a high school diploma or vocational baccalaureate as well as enthusiasm for aviation and technology," explains the airline manager. The training lasts two and a half years, one year of theory and one and a half years of practical and theoretical block. The training takes place in Bremen (theory), Rostock (practice) and in Phoenix Arizona/USA.
Future pilots will have to put around 90,000 euros on the table for this. "But there are financing concepts for this," explains Brandes. According to him, the annual starting salary of pilots is 65,000 euros "and can rise to over 200,000 euros".
The proportion of women is still quite low. "About ten percent of our cockpits are women," he calculates, "but the proportion is constantly increasing." Brandes attributes this to "the fact that being a pilot is also a very family-friendly profession". On the one hand, this is due to more and more part-time models, but also to "the fact that you can return to the cockpit immediately after a family break," says Brandes.
But he also makes it clear: "You don't come home every evening, overnight stays in a hotel are part of everyday professional life."
What's more, pilots don't necessarily have to sit in the cockpit at Lufthansa. "There are many other possibilities, such as joint development with the manufacturers or the exchange with air traffic control," says Brandes.
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By the way, pilots always fly the same type of aircraft or the same type family. Brandes, for example, has a licence for the Airbus A 320 – a classic short-haul aircraft. "I like this class because flying here is particularly intense," he says. In Munich there are also the long-haul aircraft of the type Airbus A 340, A 350 and again the A 380, in Frankfurt also the 340 family, the Boeing 787 and in the future the 777, the Dreamliner.
Brandes wants to take away one worry from career starters. "The current demand for travel shows us that people have a longing to travel, to get to know new cultures and countries." That's why it continues to be a "fascinating industry".
Further information can be found on the Internet at: be-lufthansa.com/de.
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