by Lufthansa Flyer | Jul 17, 2016 | Featured, Industry News, Lufthansa, Passenger Experience |
Lufthansa has announced that it has NO plans to alter its timetable for flights between Germany and Turkey. This announcement also covers SWISS service from Zurich.
Barring any other events in Turkey operations will function as normal. However if you would like to confirm your flights, you can do so on LUFTHANSA’s Flight Status webpage.
In additional news related to events in Turkey, the FAA has temporarily banned any Airline or private operator from operating flights between the US and Turkey. This also includes airlines that use a 3rd country in the routing as long as one of the stops involves Turkey. A fictional example would be a flight that originated in Turkey, had a stop in Frankfurt, and then continued to the US. That aircraft would be banned from US airspace.
According to the FAA, this is being done out of an abundance of caution as security at Turkish airports is currently not to the standards required by the FAA.
by Lufthansa Flyer | Jun 28, 2016 | Featured, Industry News, Passenger Experience |
In a proposal submitted by Homeland Security, visitors coming to the US under the Visa Waiver Program may be asked to provide a listing of their various social media ‘profiles’. Specifically, this would apply to ESTA and I-94W applicants.
In the proposal, Homeland Security suggests that any information provided would only be used for ‘vetting and contact purposes’.
As scary and invasive as this sounds, the proposal as written suggests that providing this addition information will be ‘voluntary’. However critics of the proposal suggest that most applicants will feel like they have to submit the information so that their applications are not deemed suspicious or incomplete.
The proposal is now open to a 60 day period for public comment before any further steps are taken.
How’s that for Big Brother concepts??
by Lufthansa Flyer | Jun 26, 2016 | BREXIT, Featured, Industry News, Lufthansa, Passenger Experience |
Of course there are other more important issues that revolve around the UK’s decision to secede from the EU, but LH’s CEO has offered his perspective on BREXIT’s impact on the Lufthansa Group.
Carsten Spohr, CEO of the Lufthansa Group has voiced his confidence that the group will see minimal impact to it’s bottom line once the British split from the EU is complete. Considering LH’s total sales, the UK comprises only 5% of revenue to LH’s top line.
As it stands now, LH group flies over 7 million passengers between mainland Europe and the UK each year with half of that traffic involving Frankfurt or Munich. London Heathrow itself sees over 350 LH Group departures each week.
What may change things once the split is complete is the amount of demand that the UK will have for LH flights. As it stands now, with the open travel policy between EU states, it’s easy to move from country to country without much effort and European Airlines are the direct beneficiary of this freedom. However, should border and immigration controls be reinstated, the desire for Europeans to visit the UK and vice versa, may change noticeably.
We can hope that intelligent heads prevail and that travel will remain largely unaffected with the new look to the EU. But that may be wishful thinking…..not too many intelligent heads seem to be around.
