Sunny Side Up

This afternoon the door of the fully booked flight LH 3558 was reopened after the airplane was ready to taxi to the runway. Someone from MUC-Airport enters the cockpit and after just a short while the Captain makes the following announcement: “My CEO Wolfgang Mayrhuber just asked me to wait for him, he will arrive in a while. I have to apologize for the upcoming delay, but I have no other choice…”
Now a full loaded Boeing 737 is waiting for the Lufthansa CEO. We all paid for our tickets and many of us, including myself, we have evening appointments in Vienna. Finally Wolfgang Mayrhuber shows up, the door is closed, Wolfgang Mayrhuber enters the Cockpit to say hello to his crew on the flight deck, shakes the hands of his cabin crew and sits down just some rows behind me in C-class. No apology, no single friendly word to a fully booked flight, to his clients (!!) who all paid for a their various tickets, to people who finally pay some of Wolfgang Mayrhuber bills. How can the CEO of one of the biggest airlines worldwide by mistake think this scheduled flight is his private jet. He is just the CEO, that’s it, he does not own Lufthansa. For me this behaviour is rather arrogant. A man who is responsible for 90.000 employees worldwide should not act that way.
Finally we arrive 40 minutes late in Vienna and I of course miss my appointment… This makes me sad and until now I do not understand, why the LH-CEO himself is also directly responsible for this huge delay. His duty should be to bring us save, quick and punctual to our booked destination. Frequent flyers like me and you out there, pay finally the bills and at LH the best clients (HONs and the Top-SENs) generate approximately 17% of turnover of Lufthansa’s “passage”.

Now it’s your turn, I am curious to read your comments on that …

Regards

Football Fan

Amazing.

Thanks for sharing the information about this incident.

Somehow, this fits my picture of what I have read and seen of that guy, and it is fully in line with the treatment LH and Miles and More have displayed towards their customers since this guy took over. He's full of it.

In fact, I think this would be a good story for the German press.

Kiwi Flyer

Somehow I doubt this is the first or last time an airline CEO behaves this way.

flamboyant 1

I bet Mr. Mayrhuber had an evening appointment in VIE as well.

He flies LH commercially, which costs the company almost nothing. He did not take the LH Private jet, chartered from Netjets. He acted in the shareholders interest, but he at the same time inconvenienced 100+ customers with a 40 minute delay.

You cannot make all stakeholders happy at the same time.

Threy

The costs arising out of a potentially long delay , especially into VIE with such a low MCT and the later flights do not justify the expenses saved by not going on a private jet...

SenAOI

This really strange occurrence makes me remembering a weird thing which happened to me I think in 1989. Checking in my F-class-flight from JFK to FRA I've been told, that I will be rebooked to another flight because this flight is full. I have to wait for three more hours. As I had a confirmed flight, I asked what has happened. The check in staff didn't want to give me an information. So I asked for the LH station manager. After insisting he told me, that the LH CEO Heinz Ruhnau had disposed that his daughter would need a seat in the fully booked F-cabin. As I had been the last one to check in, they denied to give me the last F-seat.
After longer discussions I've got the further information, that Ruhnau's daughter had a 10%-ticket with standby-status. As I insisted getting my seat, the station manager had a long and tough discussion with the LH headquarter in Germany. At least he told his boss, that the flight will not start with Ruhnau's daughter but with me. And so it happened. 16 years later once again I have to thank this courageous guy in JFK.
Cheers Luigi

andre1970

^

SenAOI

I've missed some LH connecting flight with less than 20 minutes. For me they did not wait that long when I came in late due to technical problems with LH metal. And I am busy as well when I'm flying.

andre1970

I can imagine that this time His Majesty "The Wolf" didn't have the time to serve coffee to all the passengers! Short flight.

rag

If you are upset, tell it to the press. I would love to read that story somewhere other than FT... But I also guess that in this case the first guy who gets into trouble will be the pilot who told the truth...

AZ Travels the World

That's actually the only thing about this story that really surprised me -- that the pilot was so forthcoming about the reason for the delay. Good for him.

party_boy

Maybe he was dusgusted as we are.

ulev

I have not met one LH employee yet, who likes this guy.

But anyway, why did none of the passengers on this plane talk to him directly while he was there? Make him feel what his customers think about his behavior might be embarressing enough to keep him from doing it again.

Football Fan

One thing I really dislike is his shameless self-aggrandization in every LH (exclusive) magazine (just look at the photos). It seemed to me that Mr. Weber had a much more modest approach.

I would definitely have given him a piece of my mind...

I really hope this makes it to Bild or Der Spiegel.

andre1970

Hey ulev, check BP_cosmopolitan's post (#78) out!