Flight attendants at the German flag carrier Lufthansa are fighting to overturn a new tax decree that has significantly hiked the price of nearly free or deeply discounted standby flight concessions that form a big benefit for airline employees.
For outsiders, these kinds of ‘nonrev’ benefits are seen as a way for airline employees to fly around the world in Business and First Class for next to nothing… the very essence of living a Champagne lifestyle on a lemonade budget.
The reality can, however, be very different. Not only do many aviation workers not even bother using these benefits because the process of getting an available seat can be so stressful, but those who do aren’t normally using these benefits to jet away on vacation.
Instead, many nonrev standby passengers are flight attendants are simply commuting to work to the big, expensive metropolitan cities where they are based because they simply cannot afford to live closer to the airport where they work out of.
Many flight attendants are reliant on cheap standby tickets to get to work, and union activists in Germany warn that new tax rules enacted last November are now placing a “significant additional financial burden” on low-income airline workers.
“Many do not use these tickets for personal travel, but simply to be able to do their jobs,” the UFO union, which represents flight attendants at Lufthansa, wrote in a recent circular.
“In some cases, the new regulation can mean several hundred euros less to live on at the end of the month,” the union message added.
“It is important to us that policymakers understand what this regulation means in practice. For many employees, this is not about perks or privileges—it is about being able to continue practicing their profession economically at all.”
The way that the tax decree works is complex, but the UFO provided an example of how the new rules affect a 20-year-old female flight attendant working out of Germany’s financial capital, Frankfurt, but living in Dresden because she can’t afford to live in the city.
- She earns around €2,023 per month and has a tax-free flight allowance of €327 in order to commute to work on standby tickets.
- She then pays €530 in tax per month, and €900 in standby flights, leaving her with just €920 per month in living expenses.
- Under the new tax regulations, she must now include a taxable benefit of €76.46 for each ticket, which increases her monthly taxable income.
- Her new tax bill rises from €530 to €850, leaving her with just €600 in living expenses per month.
The UFO points out that many airlines across Europe, North America, and further afield, rely on flight attendants commuting to work using deeply discounted standby tickets in order to find and retain the necessary employee talent.
Without these benefits, airlines would have to rely on a much smaller hiring pool of candidates who have the necessary means to live in the expensive cities where they are based.
Whether German lawmakers are about to repeal the decree is a different matter altogether. The UFO union has started a petition to put pressure on government officials, but one commentator rejected the union’s complaint, saying that ordinary Germans are facing massive hikes in fuel costs that are further exacerbating the cost-of-living crisis in the country.
Some flight attendants, however, pointed out that standby staff passengers working for North American carriers like Alaska Airlines and United end up flying cheaper with Lufthansa than their own employees due to these new tax rules.
