The flight attendant union UFO fears that the latest Lufthansa offshoot “City Airlines” could contribute to the rapid dissolution of the existing Lufthansa CItyline. There is no concrete evidence for the claim, but the announcement that 40 regional jets could be ordered from Embraer or Airbus for the new company is considered to be “hardly retractable facts”. Furthermore: “This only leads UFO to the conclusion that a quick exit from the CityLine is planned.”

The new airline currently has an Airbus A319 registered on the AOC. However, it has not yet taken off commercially. This step is to be taken up in the summer of 2024. Initially, City Airlines will operate the Airbus A319 aircraft. Later, the plan is to switch to either the Airbus A220 or E2 jets from its competitor Embraer. Lufthansa has not yet made a final decision in this regard.

The UFO union is quite critical of the “copy” of Lufthansa CItyline and fears that the existing regional carrier will no longer have a long future. Daniel Kassa Mbuambi, UFO chairman, said: “We expect a similar scenario here as with the closure of the Germanwings and SunExpress Deutschland group airlines. A new, previously untariffed platform leads to the closure of well-tariffed flight operations and at the same time puts all other group airlines, especially Lufthansa's cabin employees, under pressure. Lufthansa is once again preventing solutions at the collective bargaining table that could have secured long-term employees of the CityLine cabin sustainable employment in their own company. Now Lufthansa CityLine pilots and flight attendants are paying a very high price for their long-standing loyalty to the group.”

According to UFO, the management of City Airlines has repeatedly been asked to negotiate a collective agreement. However, the Independent Flight Attendants want to run these exclusively and insist that there should be no parallel negotiations with other unions. “Under no circumstances will UFO enter into a competitive bidding war for the cheapest conditions,” explains Joachim Vázquez Bürger, UFO board member for politics and foreign relations and negotiator at Lufthansa CityLine and City Airlines. “In the ongoing collective bargaining negotiations, which have so far been very constructive, we are initially developing the basis for a collective remuneration agreement for new hires and a general collective agreement for all cabin employees. In the next step, we will negotiate the collective bargaining conditions of a company pension scheme, a profit-sharing scheme and finally the conditions for a change of employer from Lufthansa CityLine cabin employees to City Airlines. Contrary to lip service to the contrary, it is already foreseeable at this point in the discussions that the group management has been with the company for a long time Lufthansa CityLine wants to demand significant concessions from cabin employees employed by Lufthansa CityLine when they switch to City Airlines in terms of remuneration, working hours, working conditions, free time entitlement, roster structure and stability. Here, a collective bargaining conflict that is not resolved at group level is being fought out on the backs of a workforce that is In the past it has always been part of the solution and never part of the problem and has always had to take a back seat economically. We cannot and will not accept that.”