The Lufthansa Group — which includes Lufthansa, Eurowings, SWISS, Edelweiss Air, Austrian Airlines, and Brussels Airlines — will reportedly start addressing its passengers and members of the flight crew in gender neutral terms in official announcements both in the airport and aboard airplanes.
Lufthansa Group Latest Airline Company to Favor Gender Neutral Terms
The airline group is the latest commercial aviation entity to adapt to the use of gender neutral terms in its official announcements and communications, according to this article written by Christian Mayer of Business Insider in an interview with Timotheus Piechatzek, who is the equal opportunities officer of the Lufthansa Group. This means that salutations such as Meine Damen und Herren — which means Ladies and Gentlemen in German — will eventually no longer be used…
…but this news is not surprising, as gender neutrality and diversity has been a focus of the Lufthansa Group in recent years, according to its official Internet web site: “In 2016 the Lufthansa Group has set targets for the women’s quota with a deadline for their achievement by December 31, 2021. For Deutsche Lufthansa AG a target quota of 30% has been set for the Executive Board and for the management levels below the Executive Board a target quota of 20 percent for management level 1 and 30 percent for management level 2. For the Lufthansa Group the target quota for management level 1 has been set at 18 percent and for management level 2 at 24 percent.”
In a logo, the Lufthansa Group has also embraced the colors of during what is known as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Pride Month — at least, that is what it is officially called in this proclamation of the White House of the United States — to show its support throughout the month of June of 2021.
Back in October of 2019, Air Canada announced that the airline will eventually replace the expression ladies and gentlemen with a neutral term — such as the word everyone, for example — in manuals for flight attendants and during announcements aboard airplanes in an attempt to include passengers and customers who do not identify themselves as either male or female and as part of its commitment to respect gender identity, diversity and inclusion…
…and during the past two years, other airlines around the world — such as Delta Air Lines, Japan Airlines, and easyJet — have announced adopting similar measures for gender neutrality in their public announcements and communications.
Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, JetBlue Airways, and Southwest Airlines were in the process of updating their ticket booking tools and planned to add a binary option to the gender menu on their official Internet web sites back in February of 2019 in order to be more inclusive in dealing with a diverse population of travelers. In addition to male or female, choices could include undisclosed or unspecified.
Additionally, United Airlines planned at that time to allow people select M for male, F for female, U for undisclosed or X for unspecified from the gender menu when booking a ticket on its official Internet website or mobile application software program — as well as also have the option of picking ‘Mx.’ as a title in order to to ensure that all customers of the airline feel comfortable and welcome no matter how they identify themselves.
Summary
Commercial airlines have been striving to ensuring greater inclusiveness to their customers and employees in recent years; and adding gender choices is not the only action on which they have embarked. For example, an announcement from Alaska Airlines pledged that the airline will hire more black female pilots by the year 2025.
Whenever I write an article here at The Gate and I do not definitively know the gender of the person about whom I am writing or to whom I am referring, I keep the article as gender-neutral as possible to respect the identity of the person.
I also believe in respecting the identity of any person — even to the point of ensuring that I spell or pronounce the name of the person properly — and not wanting to personally alienate anyone…
…but I do wonder if the Lufthansa Group will adopt the use of the term Germxn in reference to how it addresses the name of the country in which it is based…
Photograph ©2017 by Brian Cohen.
