Tooday, the Lufthansa Group hosted the first meeting of its Accessibility Customer Advisory Committee in Frankfurt. The aim of the newly founded committee is to improve the travel experience for passengers with impairments or disabilities.

Members with limited mobility, visual impairments, hearing impairments, or cognitive impairments and with corresponding accessibility requirements are represented in the committee. This committee will support the Lufthansa Group with their observations, experiences, and ideas in order to further develop existing offers, products, and services for people with visible and invisible disabilities.

The Lufthansa Group is supported in this initiative by the North Rhine-Westphalia State Disability Council (Landesbehindertenrat NRW; LBR), the umbrella organization of self-help groups and social associations in the state.

The overarching goal of the LBR is to enable people with disabilities and chronic illnesses to participate in all areas of life. In addition to around 20 members of the LBR, who represent various disabilities, Paralympic athletes Johanna Recktenwald and Nico Dreimüller will support the Lufthansa Group’s Accessibility Advisory Board with their personal experiences and expertise.

“Raise awareness of the importance of inclusion and participation”

Dieter Vranckx, Chief Commercial Officer Lufthansa Group, said: “We want to work with the target group to further develop the travel experience for passengers with physical or cognitive impairments and make it as easy and self-determined as possible.

“The members of the Lufthansa Group Accessibility Customer Advisory Committee support us with valuable insights and recommendations. In line with a holistic approach, we are looking at the entire travel chain and the sometimes very different needs for barrier-free travel. We are focusing on all the levers that we, as the Lufthansa Group, have at our disposal to continuously improve the flight experience for all our guests.”

LBR Managing Director Ann-Christin Rauch said: “This cooperation is a milestone for accessibility, as it is the first of its kind between a self-help association and a private company. For LBR NRW, one of its main tasks is the solution-oriented implementation of accessibility, as it is not only essential for people with disabilities, but also offers relief and comfort to the general public.

“We want to help ensure that people with disabilities also have the right and opportunity to travel as a matter of course. In addition, we want to use the project to raise awareness among other social groups of the importance of inclusion and participation.”

The Lufthansa Group will meet regularly with the advisory committee members to gather feedback, discuss suggestions, and further develop promising ideas. Lufthansa customers with special requirements for air travel can also share their experiences and contribute to current issues relating to barrier-free travel. In recent months, Lufthansa’s websites have been redesigned to provide important information for people with disabilities or impairments, with additional helpful information and a simpler structure and language. This can be accessed at any time via a wheelchair icon, which is prominently displayed in the header of each web page next to the language settings at the top right-hand corner.

Lufthansa Group-wide goal: Making invisible disabilities visible

The majority of disabilities worldwide are invisible to the people around them: approximately 1.3 billion people live with some form of disability, and up to 80 percent of them have an invisible disability. In this context, the Lufthansa Group is gradually introducing the “Hidden Disabilities Sunflower” initiative across all of its airlines. The global program to support people with invisible disabilities enables those affected to discreetly indicate their needs. The symbol is a yellow sunflower on a green background, usually in the form of a lanyard with a pendant or a corresponding pin. Austrian Airlines has been a member of the Sunflower Initiative since 2023, Eurowings since April 2025, and SWISS since November. Lufthansa will follow later this year, and by the end of 2026, all airlines in the Lufthansa Group are expected to be on board with the initiative.

Featured image credited to Lufthansa Group