If you care about your health, do not fly Lufthansa. You might be booted from the plane for wearing a mask. And if you have friends or family who are immunocompromised, such as being on chemo, tell them to avoid Lufthansa and boycott Lufthansa in solidarity.
The incident below in some ways resembles the forced removal of an elderly dentist, Dr. Dao, from a United flight years back, in which Dr. Dao was knocked out and had his jaw broken. While there was no violence here, the nature of rule-breaking was similar, and in some ways worse. In Dr. Doa’s case, he was merely arbitrarily told to get off the plane after he had taken his seat and tried to demur. Here, the crew claimed that a passenger’s medical mask made them “uncomfortable,” although as we’ll soon see, the fact set is borderline bizarre. The idea that the fact of masking could bother airline crew is not credible given that Lufthansa required passengers to wear masks at least through July 2021.1
Lufthansa is a code-sharing partner with United. We asked the Lufthansa press office whether it was their policy to refuse seating to passengers wearing medical masks. We did not receive a reply.
Keep in mind that the agreement that governs your ticket, the airline’s Contract of Carriage, typically gives the carrier lots of leeway in terms of not boarding passengers even if they have a confirmed seat.2 However, once a passenger is seated, the Contract of Carriage generally limits the basis for removal to disruptive behavior and posing a danger. As we’ll see, Lufthansa’s is typical and hence would not justify removing a passenger for wearing a medical mask.
To give some background, we’ll turn to the notorious case of Dr. Dao, a 69 year old dentist who was knocked unconscious, and had his nose broken and two teeth knocked out when private security goons in the employ of the airport removed him. The press almost universally, and inaccurately, depicted United as having the right to remove seated passengers to remedy an overbooking problem. Similarly, the press ignored that four United personnel, who’d apparently missed a connection or worse had been misbooked, showed up at the gate at the last minute, after passengers had boarded, and were the reason for ejecting Dr. Dao to free up a seat.
Now to the mask incident. By e-mail from a reader well known to the site:
So it finally happened — I got taken off the flight for wearing a mask.
Trying to go home to visit my mom, who we have managed to keep COVID free still to this day, so the same protocol that was kept us safe for five years was followed. But the tolerance towards it is gone now apparently…
I think I told you a story about them being very aggressive about it a couple years ago, well, this time they starting harassing me about it from the start, I told them to leave me alone and to go do whatever they have to actually do as their job and to stop bothering me, and then the captain came and said that I was “making the crew uncomfortable” and they will either physically remove me or rebook me to another flight and route. The latter would have meant spending an additional day at various airports, so I refused, and then they indeed came with a cop.
Then I had a long conversation with the cops explaining to them what happened, they said I didn’t really do anything wrong but Lufthansa as a private company can do whatever they want (what about the contract that is the ticket?) and this is “tresspassing”, etc. I said to them that I have a strong suspicion the flight was fully booked (indeed, every single seat was taken) and Lufthansa was looking for a way to kick someone out, they nodded silently, and that was it…
The notion that the flight crew was being aggressive turns out not to be a stretch. In response to my quire for more detail:
They didn’t ask me to remove it, they were just very aggressively asking me why I am wearing it, with questions implying I had a mental health problem. I told them to leave me alone and stop bothering me, they came back, I told them that I am not an idiot, but a professional who knows very well what he is doing, and that they should also go back to doing their job, which certainly does not feature harassing passengers, they continued. All that time I am sitting motionless and silent in the seat, thus “causing disruption” is just out of the question, but then they came telling me I am making them “uncomfortable” and should be taken out the plane and rerouted. I categorically refused because I had paid for this flight, not for the other one and for sitting at airports for another 12-24 hours, and also because the whole thing was so surreal I couldn’t believe they were serious. Then they came with police…
The scheme was effectively to deliberately provoke even a mild reaction to persistent pestering, then use that as justification for further action and escalation. And I did not wise up to that on time…
So it looks like the staff set out to go after a masked passenger, apparently hoping he’d get stroopy if they pushed hard enough, which is exactly what happened. This might just seem like a case of a crew member for some reason taking a dislike to our hapless reader and acting on it (which is hardly the sort of behavior that should be exhibited in any customer service business), except this was not the first time that this has happened to our abused reader.
So an alternative hypothesis is that Lufthansa sees masked passengers as bad for business, but for some reason sees asking them to remove their masks as a less effective way to get rid of them and might also risk alienating passengers who heard the interaction.
Conor featured tweets in today’s Llinks from Yasha Levine on how unmasked firefighters are, per the New York Times, “getting sick and dying from toxic wildfire smoke.” Is this issue the real one for Lufthansa, that they see any masked passenger as a warning that it might not be safe to fly unprotected, and that message is verboten?
But on the flip side, how likely is it that an airline would boot a paying passenger over masking unless they had another body to fill that seat? There is no way to know, but if an oversold flight was a the scenario, then the crew picked a fight to justify removal without compensation. Another alternative is a VIP customer was waitlisted.
A regular Lufthansa business class customer did note that Lufthansa flight personnel are heavy-handed, and speculated that German affinity for conformity might have a lot to do with the hostility to a masked passenger. Any readers who know the ins and out of airline practice are encouraged to speak up.
Regardlessy, this stinks. So we have the this lame excuse about making the crew “uncomfortable”?
The relevant sections from Lufthansa’s 2025 Contract of Carriage. First is the opening part of Article 7; the balance refers to issues not in play here like refusing security checks, not paying the applicable ticket price, not having needed travel documents, violating safety rules, and smoking on the plane:
The only potentially relevant section is: “may adversely affect the safety and security, the health or wellbeing of other passengers to a significant degree.” But it was the crew that claimed they were “uncomfortable”. That’s not passengers.
More generally, how can mask wearing possibly “adversely affect…wellbeing…to a significant degree”? Is the new standard that the public at large must be subjected to the lowest common denominator neuroses of individuals? This is the reverse of the traditional model of mental health, where one purpose of therapy was to have the therapist tell the patient (politely) that certain things, such as phobias, were their “stuff” and they needed to work on recognizing that and managing that.
Here is the other relevant section:
The pilot’s remarks confirmed the violation of the Contract of Carriage. He did not take the position that the passenger had not complied with crew member instructions. He instead pinned it on the bogus “making the crew uncomfortable” which in context seems to be about the mask and not about trying to position the crew as instructing him to remove his mask or that his pushback against their mask interrogation amounted to any sort of threat to them or disruptive behavior.
So it looks as if passengers who want to fly masked will both have to carry doctor’s notes attesting to their medical necessity, as well as copies of the carrier’s Contract of Carriage, so as to politely ask for the crew to point out exactly what you’ve done that warrants removal.
Of course, you could just boycott Lufthansa instead.
_____
1 
2 Admittedly, airlines so abused their ability to overbook and then bump passengers to other flights that regulatory changes in the last few years have made it costly for an airline to rebook a confirmed passenger without his consent without also providing ample compensation.
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A case like this need lots of media attention and social media calling out Lufthansa with threats of boycotts until they back down an apologize. Sharing the air of several score of people during an ongoing pandemic should encourage people to wear masks while traveling. Maybe that passenger should have said that he will take down his musk so long as Lufthansa accept legal responsibility if they get Covid from that flight and put it in writing. Your move, Captain.
I had already reconciled myself to the fact I will NEVER fly again. However, if I had to, this is news I can use. I NEVER rated Lufthansa and the couple of times I used Frankfurt as their hub to allow me to fly to Birmingham, UK from Sydney (so as to be a LOT closer to Nottingham than LHR) were the proverbial sh!tshow.
Clown operation. And now we know they are EVIL clowns. I won’t risk Godwin’s Law but WTAF? DO NOT touch this airline.
My husband brought home Covid from a domestic flight two years ago – He was too embarrassed to wear a mask when others didn’t – and I have been sick with a bad case of Long Covid ever since. The risk of exposure is real.
I am not surprised Semmelweiss suffered mental health issues.
Last month I flew from Atlanta-Montreal-Atlanta on Delta wearing an N95 going and coming.
Flight attendants did not say a word, except to ask what I wanted to drink.
On Saturday we flew on American from Mexico to Canada with a stop in Dallas. On the Mexico to Dallas leg, two of the four all-male cabin crew members wore masks. We wondered idly if it was to protect themselves or to protect the rest of us from them. We hoped it was the former.
The writer did not address the scenario you just indicated, that the flight attendants were fearful that the mask was worn due to a contagious disease of the passenger. The passengers testimony was that they refused to directly answer why they were wearing a mask. I suggest if they responded about their concern to protect another, and calmly, they would have picked on someone else to provoke unruly behavior that can be cause for removal.
I wear N-95s regularly on US Delta flights. I never had anybody bother me about it and I think the number of mask wearers has gone up slightly in recent months (from low single digits to mid single digits).
I have a number of other reasons for not loving Delta, but they have not bothered me about masks.
P100s elicit a different reaction.
And on an intercontinental flight with 500 people on it, given the statistics of prevalence and the data on CO2 concentration, especially while taxiing (it gets over 4000 ppm, i.e. most air is rebreathed), N95 (which is also supposed to be removed after a few hours for a number of reasons) may not be enough.
I’ve worn this mask while in line to board and while boarding, and often during some of the flight with American, Delta, and Emirates. I didn’t even get funny looks. If anything, people avert their eyes, since the mask seems to signal that I have a serious health issue:
These are very good and the only near-bulletproof protection.
Note that on a flight the air is so bad that you are only ever going to face something worse in an actual COVID ward.
Meanwhile people who work with these viruses won’t work with them merely with N95s. Not enough protection. And they work with laminar flow hoods and everything…
Yay Yves! Love that mask!
Or else they’re afraid you might choke them to death with the Force ;).
I always wear my N95 in the airport and on the plane (removed briefly for Security Theatre) and never had any issues with this. As said above, the only thing the FAs wanted to know was what I wanted to drink or eat.
This includes two round trip flights on Lufthansa to Europe since 2021. Though while the flights were chosen for price/schedule, LH quality wise is no better than the AA/UA/DL trio.
My partner and I always wear N95 masks when boarding until seated and the air circulation system is functioning. Sometimes longer if there’s a crowd standing near our seats. We also wear them when we get off especially while standing and our faces are 30cm from other people’s. We only fly Air Canada (to London), Porter (to Halifax) and Air Transat (to Cuba). We’ve never had a problem nor felt anyone cared.
I fly Lufthansa regularly (6-8 times per year), always wearing an FFP2 mask. I never had any issue.
Strangely enough, I’ve been wearing special moisturizing masks on long flights since the early 1990s, and nobody’s ever said anything to me.
Including on Lufthansa (although not recently).
One wonders what would have happened had the passenger in question removed their mask, and then replaced it when airborne. Would the flight have turned around. I guess it would be unlikely, unless the person in the left-hand seat had some Trump-level neuroses/psychopathy.
What if a passenger showed up wearing a Trump mask? Still, not as popular as the old Nixon masks.
Distressing story. I don’t fly commercial any longer, so solidarity in mere spirit is about all I can do in response to this information, but if I hear anyone considering using Lufthansa, I’ll clue them in about their uncompromising position as regards the health of others.
In September 2020 when masking was mandatory I was seated up front on a regional jet. Across from me was an unmasked deadheading pilot. I asked the flight attendant to have him masking up. He refused. My mistake was snapping a photo.
I was kicked off the plane. The gate supervisor was apologetic and provided a hotel room and meal allowance.
Onemileatatime.com doesn’t believe the story:
Lufthansa Calls Police On Passenger For Wearing Mask? I Don’t Buy It…
Taking photos of airline employees is risky business, as I commented!
This is from a VERY established reader who does not make shit up. But it is telling how people like to side with authority these days.
And if the victim were to start to film an argument, that would guarantee him getting booted.
As to third parties filming, Lufthansa can put the kibosh on that. From its Contract of Carriage:
I hope the abused party retains counsel and seeks legal redress. A large one.
It would be nice to learn the outcome.
Retired Carpenter
I flew Lufthansa round trip to Germany last year and I found the staff on the plane to be obnoxious and supercilious… they responded very pettily to the smallest of infractions, and had little patience for any kind of pushback. The guy next to me had a very slim nylon wallet-type thing strapped to his chest, which he said he was supposed to keep with him at all times, and the stewardess made him remove it during takeoff and landing because she said it was blocking the exit. One had the feeling that the moment he objected, she was ready to double and triple down on making him remove it.
This is weird. In 2021, Lufthansa was requiring masks. Four years later a complete u-turn?
Lufthansa Group adjuss mask requirement.
Yes, I linked to their July 2021 policy in the post above.
I recommend that Lufthansa passengers protest this policy by insisting on wearing other types of weird masks during their flights.
I modestly suggest the Michael Myers latex mask worn by the sadistic killer in the Halloween movies. It was actually a William Shatner mask painted white by the prop crew, so the protester would be on very solid ground by saying he was a fan of Star Trek and wanted to promote his favorite character.
Headlines for the incident of forcibly removing a passenger wearing a William Shatner mask would be delicious. And the comedy value even for the notoriously humorless Germans would be worth the price of the ticket.
My partner recently flew with Lufthansa and unfortunately sat next to someone who was partially wearing a mask, as in most of the time not, and coughing up a lung non-stop through the whole 6-hour flight, making everyone within range extremely uncomfortable.
One might ask, wouldn’t a visibly sick and coughing person be a candidate for deplaning? I wondered if maybe they had a medical note saying it’s not infectious.
And so, what to make of this item? Could it be there’s some kind of requirement to provide medical documentation assuring it’s not infectious and this passenger didn’t provide any? Because there is at least one other recent instance of a masking passenger projectiling fluids in every direction and not being deboarded.
As an aside, that they share the same ruleset as United is probably significant. My own experience is that flight attendants with various American airlines seem to be trained by the IDF, or law enforcement or something, immediately escalating directly to threat of force and coercion on the basis of anything, real or imagined. Do they share training with Lufthansa?
Too bad, Lufthansa has the few remaining passenger 747’s, which I love.
I can’t find the link to the article. Can someone point it out?
My wife and I flew Lufthansa from Seattle to Frankfurt and back in May, both wearing N95s from start to finish, without the slightest hitch. That included going up to the counter in SEA to opt out of facial recognition at the gate; no problem.
I just flew back from Germany on a United flight and one of the flight attendants was wearing a mask. Strange behavior from Lufthansa.
Let ’em have it, Lufthansa’s contact page. The only option I saw was to respond to their query re possibly overlooking a passenger concern.
It sounded like the passenger was more confrontational than necessary. Of course Lufthansa still acted horribly, but I’ve generally found it useful to stay pleasant when someone hassles me about masking. I just say I’m more comfortable with it on, I offer them one if I have some spares (I usually do), etc. Also if covering my face is an issue, i don’t mind taking it off briefly and offering to let them take a photo, but I say I want to put it back on afterwards. That has only happened once, at a bank (they wanted to check my face against my DL photo) and they were fine with it.
Added: an online acquaintance was once told he wasn’t allowed to wear a *powered* respirator aboard a plane. But no probs with a passive one.
When required to remove my mask for confirmation of ID, I take a deep breath first, doff the mask for inspection (which only lasts a few seconds), replace the mask, then exhale.
I have gotten prickly with American over a ridiculous demand that I check a bag that fit under the seat in front of me (bag not designed to be checked, has wheels that would break with normal checked bag handling). I was in first in one of those Tropicana orange juice can sized planes, during Covid when flights were dirt cheap, when they should have been damned happy to have passengers (plane maybe 2/3 full). Oh, and I had flown 3 legs before on this same trip with that bag under the seat in front of me with no one objecting.
The attendant tried the ridiculous line of argument that me+ the bag would unbalance the plane.
I said at 130 lbs, me + my bag weigh less than the average American woman, let alone American man.
She went and got the pilot.
I told him I had flown the last 3 legs on the same equipment, no one had raised an issue with the bag, and I am a 2 million mile American passenger in first.
He made a surly comment that I should not argue with the attendant but let the bag stay.
I’ve had similar but less contentious arguments sometimes with Delta attendants on precisely the same type of planes, but Delta’s bins are a smidge bigger even in coach, so my pet bag fits overhead. They try to get me to check it. I say it’s fit before on the same plane and walk by them. They dog me, expecting me to be proven wrong but they have to back off when the bag fits.
A lot of airlines recently have started actually weighing carry-on and enforcing official limits.
Which is, of course, absolutely ridiculous, because they don’t weigh passengers or backpacks/handbags, and some passangers weight 45kg while others weigh 145 kg. Thus making you take stuff out of your 10-kg carry-on when the limit is 8.5 kg is just pure harassment. Sometimes you can move it to the backpack, go around the corner, put it back in the carry-on, but other times you don’t have the space in the backpack for that trick.
Meanwhile they also have online check-in and if you check in online nobody looks at your carry-on, you just go straight through security.
Again, zero logic here, just harassment for the sake of it.
I flew Lufthansa twice within Europe in the last 4 months while going to visit family. The first time, 4 months ago, I was visiting my mom who was recovered in hospital and I was wearing a mask the whole time, arriving at the airport, both flights, layover time in midstop, and I had no problems from either airport staff or Lufthansa personel on the flights. Second time, about a month ago, I wasn’t wearing a mask, however I should have because I cought Covid either on the flight/layover or at the large dinner (30ish people) two days before the flight. But there was an older couple a few seats away from me which were wearing masks and Lufthansa flight crew weren’t bothering them about it at al.
In general, my experience (limited to Europe) in the last few years was that having a mask was never an issue. However what I did notice is that very often my flights were fully booked, and even overbooked sometimes, much more than say 5-10 years ago. I’m suspecting the incident in question was more about getting rid of an overbooked passenger than anything else. Or there’s something else missing to give better contextualization of the incident in question. As mentioned, my anecdotal evidence from recent Lufthansa flights shows that masks were not a problem. Dunno if the issue is releted to maybe cultural considerations (I got the feeling that the incident happened in the US, correct me if I’m wrong).
Yes, this was an international flight and the incident was on the US end.
Thank you, Yves. Good to know about the Contract of Carriage.
I’ve checked CO2 levels on every flight taken since the SARS-CoV-2 began (Aranet4 monitor), and levels are in the red zone pretty from the doors closing the disembarking. Thus, I fly masked. Never been hassled, but I have never flown Lufthansa.
I fly Lufthansa regularly between US and Asia with my pet dog in cabin. I vouch for the quality of service and also for the facility of not having to put our pet pup in cargo.
As indicated, my road warrior contact who has flown regularly between the US and Europe on Lufthansa begs to differ. Not that they are bad per se, but in his extensive experience, the crew does not see being pleasant to passengers as part of their job, unlike Emirates.
It may be that Lufthansa has issues with consistency.
I just arrived in Asia flying B class and there was a person diagonally across from me who was wearing a regular mask and I must say they were all snickering behind his back and rolling their eyes and talking in German …must be the mask!
I have been flying Lufthansa for 20 years and have been flying with our pup since 2019 and have had only 1 bad experience…they went out of their way to be nice to us last week when we arrived in Asia and even gave my pup a wiener! Now yes Emirates is at another level all together.
Even Qantas when I flew on them had very nice crew and they don’t pretend to be Emirates. Just making a good effort to be cheerful while getting their jobs done. True on American long-haul flights.
I rarely fly these days and I’ve never flown Lufthansa, but generally, along with KLM, they have a reputation in Europe for having staff who are more concerned with their own convenience than the customer (both are well known for a very picky and arbitrary attitude to luggage). There may be a cultural aspect to this too. I’ve not heard of anyone having an issue with masks – the last times I’ve flown I’ve always been masked and it never raised a comment.
Just one point though about judging airlines on one-off flights – wet leasing is increasingly common in the industry for long haul flights, so just because the aircraft is badged as Lufthansa, and the staff are wearing the uniform, does not necessarily mean that they are Lufthansa employees. I know of one airline which allows different rules for their leased routes as they generally use different makes of aircraft, with differing seat layouts/baggage capacities (this is usually written in small print on the ticket/website).