Shame on you Lufthansa!

I’m on my way back from Ancona to Munich on LH1959. I am seated by the window on 6A. Across the aisle on 5F a gentleman is sitting on his own. The aisle seat next to him on 5D is empty. Once the cabin crew announce that boarding is completed, another guy appears from the back of the aircraft and asks the gentleman on 5F is perhaps he might store his large North Face rucksack next to him, seeing at the bag won’t fit in the overhead bins of the tiny CRJ900 and the crew have obviously not been particularly accommodating in assisting the passenger to stow the large bag.

But of course the bag is so huge that it won’t fit under the seat. And so the owner of the bag wedges it in, de facto blocking the guy on 5F’s access to the aisle. I worked as a flight attendant long enough and I think I travel more than enough to know that the reason they ask you to store your bags under the seat in front of you is to ensure they will not obstruct your escape path in case of an emergency.

At some point Mr 5F tries to get out of his seat to get something out of his own bag in the overhead bin. As he clambers over the obstructing bag he nearly ends up falling on one of the flight attendants who happens to be passing. She looks down at the huge rucksack, smirks and then waltzes off. Quite obviously she either doesn’t realise that this is a violation of a safety rule or, she quite simply couldn’t give a shit.

The bag is still in the same place as we go thundering down the runway on our take-off roll.

Forty minutes later we’re already descending through the clouds towards Munich. The crew pass through the cabin to make their final cabin check. The same flight attendant walks straight past the bag wedged in between the seats and just ignores it. By this stage they guy next to me, who has also noticed the bag, is getting concerned so he uses the call button for the flight attendant. A short while later the purser appears from the front of the aircraft. He points out the bag to her and asks if that is seriously the way the bag should be stowed. She explains that her colleague must have missed the bag on her check. I then explain to her that the guy had nearly fallen on to the flight attendant before the flight and that she simply hadn’t done anything about it before take-off, to which the purser only replies ‘dann hat sie’s wohl vergessen’ – then she probably just forgot – in a tone of voice suggesting that this is all no big deal and I am only being persnickety. The guy next to me asks her what the cabin crew’s name is, to which the purser replies that she doesn’t know but think her first name is Lisa. Seriously? And then she walks away and eventually we land.

Surprisingly there’s a bit of a hold up deplaning because the owner if the bag is still waiting in the rear of the aircraft, while the poor gentleman on 5F is having trouble getting out of his seat because the bag, which is now stuck and obstructing the aisle…

I find this incident simply unacceptable from Lufthansa. I can accept bad service, rude cabin crew, crap food, delays, you name it. But safety on board is simply not negotiable. I appreciate that Lufthansa has to watch its costs. But if that means cutting down on crew training and compromising safety, then I think this airline definitely has a problem. Furthermore, the fact that the purser apparently didn’t know the name of her colleague is either a blatant lie and indicative of a highly unprofessional behaviour, or it highlights just how dire the training situation at Lufthansa is. If you don’t even know the name of the person you’re working with, what exactly does that say about your crew resource management?