In March 2021 Lufthansa widened its Pay As You Fly offering, allowing payment on departure rather than at time of booking, to all corporate clients. Previously PAYF was available only to a handful of the carrier’s largest customers.
The change of heart by Lufthansa was directly attributable to intense lobbying by German travel managers’ association VDR. The campaign was fronted by president Christoph Carnier, working closely with chief executive Hans-Ingo Biehl and vice-president Inge Pirner, the travel manager for Datev.
Carnier and his colleagues lobbied not only Lufthansa itself but also the European Commission and the German government, which applied pressure to the German carrier when it was in a difficult position to refuse, having accepted more than €3 billion in state aid to weather Covid. “I wouldn’t say Lufthansa did it voluntarily, although once it decided to proceed it behaved very constructively,” said Carnier, who has been VDR president since 2019 and director of travel, fleet and events at Merck since 1992.
The pandemic was the reason VDR redoubled its campaign to extend PAYF, which was initiated in 2017 when Air Berlin failed. When Covid led to mass flight cancellations, the association became irritated with carriers sitting sometimes for months on an estimated $35 billion globally of customer money instead of issuing prompt refunds. “I don’t know of any other service where you have to pay way in advance without a guarantee you will receive that service or, if you don’t, that you will get your money back,” said Carnier.
Since April, Lufthansa Group has introduced PAYF to sister carriers Swiss, Austrian Airlines and Brussels Airlines. Carnier has held talks with other carriers, and with travel management associations considering pressing their main airline suppliers to introduce a similar option.
PAYF has not been the only lobbying success for VDR in 2021. The association helped persuade authorities in Germany to exempt essential business travel when entering a lockdown in January.
VDR also has led efforts to reduce the European Union’s requirement for all business travelers to carry A1 social security certificates when visiting other member states, and there is optimism that an exemption for white-collar business trips of 10 days or less will be announced in the first half of 2022.