The German flag carrier plans to operate its Airbus A380 superjumbos with fewer flight attendants in the future because there won’t be as many Business Class seats onboard the double-deck planes once they’ve been refitted with new cabins.
Late last month, the airline confirmed that its fleet of eight Airbus A380s would undergo a multi-million-dollar upgrade program that will include a top-to-tail refurbishment, including brand new Business Class seats.
The first A380 (registration: D-AIMC) has already flown to the Elbe Flugzeugwerke maintenance company in Dresden for two months of extensive retrofit work, where old Business Class seats in a 2-2-2 configuration will be ripped out and replaced with an off-the-shelf Business Class seat called Vantage XL.
These seats are more spacious than the ones they are replacing, and given that they offer direct aisle access in a 1-2-1 configuration, try as it might, Lufthansa simply can’t fit as many Business Class seats on the retrofitted jets.
As a result, the Business Class seat count will drop by ten from 78 to 68 seats.
Lufthansa has decided, as reported by German aviation publication aeroTELEGRAPH, that the reduced Business Class passenger count means that it doesn’t need as many cabin crew onboard.
The crew complement will, therefore, go from 21 flight attendants to just 20 crew members once the plane has been retrofitted.
How Does Lufthansa Compare?
- Lufthansa will go from 21 cabin crew to just 20 cabin crew on its Airbus A380s. How does this compare to other A380 operators?
- Qatar Airways: 27 cabin crew
- Emirates: 25 cabin crew
- British Airways: 22 cabin crew
- Qantas: 22 cabin crew
- Air France (before retirement): 21 cabin crew
The minimum required number of cabin crew under European regulations is just 18 cabin crew (11 on the main deck and 7 on the upper deck).
One of the reasons for the disparity in crewing levels between Lufthansa and other A380 superjumbo operators is that premium cabins do require more flight attendants.
While Lufthansa will offer a total of 76 premium seats (First Class and Business Class), Qantas offers 84 premium seats, British Airways currently has 111 premium seats, and Emirates has up to 90 premium seats.
Qatar Airways has an unusually large crew complement when it only offers 56 premium seats, but then the Doha-based carrier does have a massive Economy cabin of 461 seats.
Perhaps the best airline to compare Lufthansa against is British Airways, but even then, the airline has a ratio of 5 premium passengers per cabin crew member (total), whereas Lufthansa will go to a ratio of 3.8 premium passengers per crew member.
This idea couldn’t come at a worse time for Lufthansa
On Thursday, Lufthansa was forced to cancel nearly 800 flights, leaving tens of thousands of passengers stranded, after a coordinated walkout by the airline’s mainline pilots and flight attendants.
Morale amongst flight attendants is reportedly at a nadir, with disputes opening up on multiple fronts between the airline’s management and frontline cabin crew.
Reducing the crew complement on the Airbus A380 will be viewed as yet another ‘attack’ on flight attendants and could become a flashpoint in collective bargaining negotiations that have already got off to a rocky start.
Flight attendants are already angry about reduced crew numbers on the Airbus A350
To make matters worse, the UFO flight attendant union is already in a dispute with Lufthansa over the airline’s decision to cut flight attendant numbers on its Airbus A350 long-haul aircraft that feature its new Allegris First Class cabin.
As there are only three First Class suites on these aircraft, Lufthansa has reduced the permanent crew complement in this cabin from two to just one. The union is so angry about this decision that it has refused to engage with Lufthansa on a massive project to transform the airline’s on-board service across every long-haul cabin.
Lufthansa is expected to start rolling out its new Project FOX long-haul experience later this year, but a dispute with flight attendants could cause major issues.
