Everything in one place: all the services, links and tips you need for a smooth journey. Find out how you – and we – can best prepare for flight.

Help your customers get ready for a busy summer travel season. Our pre-flight preparation guidelines have all the essential information and links needed to get ready for traveling with the airlines of the Lufthansa Group. 

Before a flight can take off, a lot of wheels have to be set in motion. At the airport and beyond, various departments and infrastructure partners work together to give each airplane a seamless departure or welcome. Punctuality and safety are paramount, but so are hospitality and hygiene. Everything is constantly monitored, checked and adjusted, especially when flight irregularities happen.

Here's how our colleagues from various teams prepare for your customers’ best possible flight experience.

Every day, he observes the various points through which each traveler passes. If passenger flow is held up anywhere between border control, security, and the airport, he communicates problems and solves matters.

One of the ways his team improves delay times is through ‘aircraft positioning’. If a flight has many passengers who need the same connecting flight, the team can decide to park the airplanes closer together. It is a matter of coordination between gates, and it significantly reduces passengers’ transfer time.

By acting swiftly, we can save our passengers valuable minutes.

You can find Matthias and his colleagues as you make your way through the airport.

So much goes into organizing a flight: personnel, equipment, catering, loaders, fuel suppliers, cleaning crew – we coordinate all these different services. That means our team has to act immediately when things get delayed, in many different ways. For example, if passengers have a really tight transfer – and need to get through security and/or customs – we can organize a personal transfer.

New this year is the "Rapid Response Team" for baggage. They act when the transfer time is less than 35 minutes. That's how long a baggage transfer usually takes in Vienna. When this happens, we will send a member of our staff to personally pick up the bag and bring it to the connecting flight. In May 2023 alone, we were able to transfer 2,724 bags this way. Their owners will never know – because their luggage arrived with them.

It is important to me that things run smoothly, but equally important that they run safely. 

You will find Annemarie’s team at the airport’s ground operations, especially during take-off and landing.

Believe it or not, hand luggage is my favorite topic these days. Because it plays an important role in making sure flights are on time. To improve baggage management, our team developed a brand-new digital tool: The “COB Prediction Tool”, which launched on 1 June 2023.

Our tool uses a wealth of data to calculate risk: historical delays, connecting flights, flight loads, passengers, and it predicts which flights could become “carry-on critical”. Passengers booked on routes flagged as critical will be emailed in advance and given the opportunity to check their bags free of charge. If a flight turns out to be too full, Amin’s team comes to the gate to help move the bags into the belly of the plane.

We just started, but we already see a downward trend in delays. We will keep at it!

Amin’s team can be found at the airport's many check-in counters and gates.

Put simply, we make sure the apps of the Lufthansa Group airlines meet our customers’ needs. How do we know what our travelers need? We have many ways to find out: through feedback tools, actual customer interviews, and testing. Key for travelers is staying up to date about the flight schedule, which our apps’ real-time functionality and notifications provide.

This summer, we are introducing a number of new options. Here are just a few:

Security waiting times allow our travelers to see the expected waiting time at certain dedicated airports.  Fast lane prebooking offers passengers a specific time slot at the security lane, if available at the specific airport. Another personalized service feature, the  Chat Assistant, can be particularly useful in the event of irregularities, as it guides the customer in the best possible way.

The focus of our daily work is to support our customers with our apps in the best way possible, especially during peak season.

Laura’s team can be found at the various Digital Hangar office locations of the Lufthansa Group.

With the peak travel season in mind, the Lufthansa Group has set up a task force. The goal of this task force is to provide all passengers with the right information at the best possible time through targeted channels, along their journey.

We offer various ways to connect with passengers through multiple touchpoints, including digital channels like social media, chat assistant, newsletters, app notifications, SMS, email, our websites, through travel agencies and finally through our airport staff and crew members.

Because it is crucial that we reach each passenger at their convenience.

You can find Patricia working remotely, communicating across all our channels.

As soon as flight plans change, his team communicates with all the different ground services to coordinate solutions. The control center is the single, trusted source for maintaining timeliness and improving processes.

This year, the team decided to reorganize its stakeholder alignment with all the different ground teams. For one thing, they now meet daily. Together, they flag fully booked or heavily loaded flights, which are then assigned more staff to speed up the loading process.

People are the key. To make our customers' travel a pleasant experience, we need people to pave the way. Last year, Lufthansa hired more than 500 new employees for all operational departments at Frankfurt Airport, mainly in customer facing roles.

You can find Alexander’s team behind large screens at offices near the airport.