Lufthansa Fosters Inclusive Environment with Gender Neutral Greetings
Joe Cortez July 16, 2021
Frankfurt, Germany - August 23, 2016: Aircraft of the Lufthansa company at the Frankfurt International airport. It is the busiest airport in Germany in terms of passenger traffic (Photo: iStock)
Lufthansa Group is in the process of dropping “ladies and gentlemen” from their vernacular, in favor of gender-neutral language. The carrier will start referring to flyers as “guests,” and remove gendered language from internal communications and contracts.
Flyers aboard Lufthansa Group aircraft will no longer be referred to by their gender, but as “guests” as they move towards gender-neutral language. CNN reports the airline is moving towards gender neutrality across all parts of the company.
Greetings Change From “Ladies and Gentlemen” to “Good Day”
The changes will be reflected across all of Lufthansa’s airlines, including Brussels Airlines, Austrian Airlines, Eurowings and Swiss. The new choice of words will be subtle: Instead of flyers being referred to as “ladies and gentlemen,” everyone will be called “guests,” and greetings from the cockpit will switch to “good morning” or “good day.”
According to the airline, the shift in language changes is part of a larger inclusivity push inside the conglomerate. In addition to dropping gendered language from aircraft, Lufthansa will also push to go gender-neutral on contracts, agreements and internal communications.
“Diversity and equality are core values for our company and our corporate culture,” the airline said in a statement to CNN. “From now on, we want to express this attitude in our language as well — and show that diversity is not just a phrase, but a lived reality.”
Although the changes will go into effect by January 2022, the carrier notes that the changes will differ between languages. While the English language can go gender neutral, German has grammatical genders, making a wholesale change challenging.
Lufthansa Joins Other Airlines in Going Gender Neutral
With the announcement, Lufthansa is joining a growing number of carriers with inclusivity language. In 2019, Air Canada announced they would commit to gender neutrality, saying the change would “ensure an inclusive space for everyone.”
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This silly politically correct self-censoring will break down in real life situations, when the flight attendant need to say things like: - Sir, I repeat, you cannot smoke in the toilet - Sir, the captain has turned own the seat belt sign you must remain seated - Madam, you have to keep your voice down, other "guests" are sleeping The increased self-censoring in public space reminds me of the USSR where people had a very good intuition what one can say publicly, what is safe with acquaintances, what belongs to close friends and family, and what you can only think. A lot of that self-censoring had nothing to do with fear of prosecution, rather the fear of getting a bad reputation in one's personnel file and spoiling one's career. A gender-neutral "Comrade" was also pioneered by the Soviet society. The twitter mob of self-righteous ideologs inherits all the features of the "purists" for an authoritarian regime. That aside, politically correct self-censoring is a cheap PR stunt for a corporation. If they weren't driven by a business case, but by some principles of public goodness, they could start by reducing legal tax evasion via offshore allocation of profits, and stop registering leased planes and ships in no tax jurisdictions. In other words, they would lead by example on issues that matter.
Miles and More keeps becoming Less and Less. They've been one of the slowest in restoring lounge use to their customers. They've allowed their frequent flyer benefits to erode continually. But they got you talking about this stuff instead. Ain't that a hoot.
I’m offended by you taking offense at my offense! All aboard the Crazy Train, like it or not.
You've got it backwards kelpetoy. The airline is excluding the vast majority of people who see themselves as a lady or a gentleman. As for sitting next to someone comment it's obvious you are among those who are perpetually offended.
If a person insists on being unique by calling themselves a different term that Lady or Gentleman then they should be able to handle being ignored. If I self-identified as a Burro, I would not expect everyone to refer to me as such. Although a couple of the posters above might often find themselves referred to as a “J” (as adults, hopefully Y’all can figure that one out).