The German pilots' union Vereinigung Cockpit is furious about the closure of the Lufthansa flight school in Bremen and the associated call by the group to cancel the training. The crane group would evade its social responsibility, criticizes the VC.

“Only with a very small percentage does Lufthansa want to keep the promises it has made to young people for their future, while the remaining students are put under pressure with questionable offers. The students of the Lufthansa-specific MPL courses would have to switch to external flight schools if they continued their training and would have to accept numerous disadvantages as a result. This would change their training so profoundly that they would not be entitled to fly for the Lufthansa airline after the crisis. The management of Lufthansa Aviation Training had used their charisma in 2018 for marketing purposes to recruit 500 flight students per year for pilot training at the LH Group. Today the LAT has every means right to get rid of the people, ”the union writes in a media statement.

The Cockpit Association fears that the previously very high standards that have been applied in the Lufthansa Group for a pilot job could be sacrificed. So far - after a positive selection process - the training risk has been with Lufthansa. The VC detects that this is now being shifted to the cadets alone. "As a result, the high training standards are sacrificed in favor of cost pressure, which puts the Cockpit Association under pressure to accept lower qualifications in the Lufthansa cockpit in the future," says the VC.

„Der Umgang mit den Flugschülern in Bremen ist beschämend,“ sagt Marcel Gröls, Vorsitzender Tarifpolitik der Vereinigung Cockpit. „Die Lufthansa hat die Besten gesucht und behandelt sie jetzt wie die Letzten. Erst wurden die jungen Menschen mit Versprechen zu Perspektiven im Konzern gelockt, nun will sie die Lufthansa möglichst geräuschlos und kostengünstig wieder loswerden. Auch wenn das Unternehmen meint, sich hier im Rahmen der legalen Möglichkeiten zu bewegen, so ist die Ausnutzung solcher Schlupflöcher in keinem Fall legitim.“