AUA parent company wants to make training more efficient. No job prospects in the corona crisis.
Under the cost pressure of the Corona crisis, German Lufthansa is converting its pilot training. The group completes the practical training at the traditional commercial aviation school in Bremen. In the future training association, only theoretical content will be taught at the location. The training sessions in the aircraft will be relocated from Bremen Airport to Rostock, announced the Group's training division Lufthansa Aviation Training (LAT) on Wednesday.
The Bremen Commercial Aviation School, founded in 1956, is not just any location; it is associated with strong emotions for most of the approximately 5,000 Lufthansa pilots. It was here that they made their first experiences as a young student pilot, worked in closely related years for the demanding tests and ultimately passed them. Bremen is considered the starting point for the strong corps spirit of the pilotage, which has repeatedly shown itself in conflicts with management in recent years.
“A realignment of the Lufthansa Group pilot training will of course also have an impact on the training of new pilots at Austrian Airlines (AUA), since we conduct our training at Lufthansa Aviation Training,” said AUA in Vienna at APA. The exact extent of the effects is still being evaluated at this point in time. Currently, however, no new pilots are planned at the AUA, so the date for the resumption of training for new pilots is still uncertain.
However, the change has no effect on the around 100 flight students who are currently still in training at the AUA. These flight students are either already in the final training phase at Lufthansa Aviation Training or are receiving further training at other flight schools.
The approximately 130 Bremen employees were informed in a works meeting on Wednesday that a social plan would be negotiated for them. “It's a really dark day for the school, the pilots and the staff,” says flight instructor and works council vice-president Philip Walker. After these announcements not only the flight instructors should fear for their jobs. “The theory teachers and employees in administration can by no means be sure that their skills will still be wanted in the future.”
“Have to put everything to the test”
“In the greatest crisis in global aviation, we in the Lufthansa Group have to put everything to the test – including our decades-old training concept for our pilots,” said Lufthansa COO Detlef Kayser on Wednesday. With the new campus model, training will be modernized and made more efficient.
The cockpit pilots' association is angry. “That means a clear cut and a step backwards in the quality of pilot training,” said Walker. The closure of the flight training company in Bremen is planned for mid-2022. Lufthansa is trying to reduce costs, for example, by only practicing practical training in propeller aircraft in Rostock instead of in jets. The bottom line is that this is not a saving because the airlines then have to pay for additional training when the graduates start their careers. Lufthansa denies that.
It is also to be feared that Lufthansa no longer wants to contribute to the training costs in the future. So far, the airline has paid around 50,000 of the 130,000 euros for pilot training. “Lufthansa is aiming for a self-pay model,” said Walker. The company did not comment on this.
In view of the massive collapse in air traffic, the Lufthansa Group currently employs too many cockpit staff. For this year, the airline group expects an average of 50 percent of the flight volume that existed in 2019 before the pandemic broke out. Management does not expect a recovery to pre-crisis levels until the middle of the decade. With the massive reduction in air traffic in the pandemic, the need for recruitment has ceased, said Lufthansa. Since there is no prospect of a cockpit workstation, Lufthansa Aviation Training offered all flight students in the past year the option of completing their training “free of charge” or continuing it in another flight school.
According to the VC, around 120 of the 300 affected students at the Bremen Commercial Aviation School filed a complaint with the Frankfurt Labor Court in order to be able to complete their training. The biggest disadvantage of outsourcing to external flight schools is that the prospective aircraft drivers would no longer be hired directly at Lufthansa and would have to pass a new selection process. Lufthansa stated that the graduates should in future be recruited by the various airlines in the Lufthansa Group – depending on the demand situation. Lufthansa left it open when the training should be resumed.
With the new concept, the group is saying goodbye to the model of training pilots in a special training course solely for the needs of their main airline Lufthansa and Lufthansa Cargo. Anyone who was accepted into this training earlier could justifiably hope for a job at the Lufthansa core company, and at tariff conditions that pilots in other group airlines could only dream of. In the future, all flight students will go through the same training steps in a “campus model” and apply to the various group companies with the more general ATPL (Airline Transport Pilot License). Because training in Bremen was previously a requirement for new pilots at Lufthansa and Lufthansa Cargo, the Group terminated the relevant “collective agreement selection” with the Cockpit Association at the end of June. That must now be renegotiated.
