Lufthansa

Lufthansa is the flag carrier of Germany and the anchor of the Lufthansa Group, which also owns SWISS, Austrian, Brussels Airlines, Eurowings, Discover and a majority of ITA Airways. It flies from twin hubs at Frankfurt and Munich on a fleet built around the Airbus A320 family short-haul and the A350, A380, Boeing 747-8 and 787-9 long-haul, and it was a founding member of Star Alliance in 1997. Registered in Cologne but operationally centred on Frankfurt, it has spent decades building the most formalised pilot training pipeline in Europe.

Flying for Lufthansa

The group's ab-initio route runs through the European Flight Academy, Lufthansa's own school, on a 22 to 24 month integrated ATPL: theory in Bremen or Zurich, single-engine flying in Arizona at the United Aviate Academy campus in Phoenix, then multi-engine IFR at Rostock-Laage or Grenchen. Training costs in the region of €120,000, though an income-share financing arrangement reduces the upfront payment to around €10,000 repaid as a percentage of later salary. Graduates are placed across the group's airlines rather than into Lufthansa alone, and the mainline also takes experienced direct-entry pilots when fleet plans require it.

Selection begins with the DLR test, run by the German Aerospace Centre, and it is a genuine gate rather than a formality: a current DLR certificate — valid for at least a year at the time of applying — is a precondition of the application, not a stage within it. Candidates who hold one are invited to a Lufthansa Group assessment day of interviews, group exercises and psychomotor testing. Because the DLR battery is sat before the airline ever meets you, and because it removes the large majority of applicants, it is the single stage where preparation changes the outcome most.