No More 'ladies and gentlemen', German Airline Lufthansa Opts For Gender-neutral Greetings

Lufthansa: German airline group Lufthansa has adopted gender-neutral greetings for fliers from now on. The airlines group which includes Lufthansa, Eurowings and Brussels Airlines have dropped the gendered phrases.

They have begun to refer to customers as “guests” or  simply offering “Good morning here on board,” to get rid of the direct subject altogether, reports CNN.

In a statement, the airline said that on future flights travelers will be referred using gender-neutral language.

"Diversity and equality are core values for our company and our corporate culture. From now on, we want to express this attitude in our language as well -- and show that diversity is not just a phrase, but a lived reality," reads the Lufthansa statement.

"We have not banned addressing our guests as 'Dear Sir or Madam' -- our aim is to welcome everyone on board on an equal basis," said Lufthansa.

In English, nouns are largely gender-neutral, however, in German and other languages, such as French, Spanish and Italian each noun has grammatical gender.

As per reports, since the beginning of June 2021 Lufthansa has been using gender-neutral language for internal communication in the company and they have even planned to make linguistic changes to contracts and documents going forward.

Earlier in June 2021, a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) committee report on the drone industry recommended more gender-neutral alternatives in the aviation terminology such as "airman" and "unmanned".

In recent years, few other airlines have made similar changes and switched to gender-neutral greetings on planes. Japan Airlines in 2020 said that they would swap “ladies and gentlemen” for more inclusive language for passengers, following the footsteps of other global airlines.

The airline said that the announcements at airports and on flights operated by the Japanese carrier will use the new forms of address such as “Attention all passengers” and “Good morning everyone”.