Lufthansa sends surprising letter of apology to customers

LONDON, June 28 (AFP): Lufthansa, Europe's second-largest airline, has issued a letter to customers apologising for having to cancel thousands of flights.
Most of the airline industry is in chaos having been forced to scrap thousands of flights due to staff shortages internally and at airports.
Most airlines have been reluctant to comment on these problems or cited the post-pandemic rise in demand as the cause.
Some have blamed a shortage of ground staff at airports for the turmoil.
Lufthansa have taken a different approach.
Lufthansa has acknowledged that it has been struggling to cope with the rise in passenger numbers in an apologetic letter to customers.
"The ramp-up of the complex air transport system from almost zero to now almost 90 per cent is clearly not proceeding with the reliability, the robustness and the punctuality that we would like to offer you again," the company wrote.
The letter acknowledges that the situation is unlikely to improve in the coming months, in a rare show of honesty from an airline. "Too many employees and resources are still unavailable, not only at our infrastructure partners but in some of our own areas, too," the company wrote.
During the pandemic, some 2.3 million jobs were lost in the aviation sector with ground handling and security worst affected. Workers have also been slow to return, put off by low wages and long hours.