Oh I think LH will take action. I think that, over time, there will be more and more outsourcing, more and more Mickey Mouse offshoot companies called Lufthansa City Airlines or City Air by Lufthansa or whatever. I think they will look at tie-ups with LCCs and recruiting non-DE based or even non-EU based crew who won’t need to speak German. Crew bases in other countries would not be impossible, even though some people here think so… They already have, or at least used to have, small local bases at certain stations. And I think that the old, solid LH which so many of us feel we grew up with will sadly disappear, when all that was needed was a bit of pragmatism.

Times have changed- some of those crew agreements were made in an era when flights to NRT went via ANC, and to GRU via LIS or west Africa. The job is simpler than it used to be, crews are home much more than they used to be, and it remains pretty well-paid. They can’t expect to keep the same privileges for ever with no flexibility.