US beer instead of Becks: Lufthansa flights from the US to Germany currently carry no standard German products. This is due to the boom in maritime transport.
Regardless of whether they board a Lufthansa flight in Bangkok, Mexico City, New York or Tokyo, German passengers immediately feel at home on board. This is of course due to the teams. But also because there are German products on the flights, which trigger a feeling of home in many. These include Albi juices or Becks beer.
However, Lufthansa flights from the US back to Germany often don’t have Beck’s or Albi juices now. “In fact, there are currently some supply bottlenecks due to the pandemic, which means that the usual products are not available on board,” a Lufthansa information spokesperson confirms to aeroTELEGRAPH.
German products come by ship
Reason for supply bottlenecks: Products are brought to the US by sea to fill the catering warehouse there. From there they are transferred to Lufthansa planes. But the demand for sea freight is very high right now and so are the prices. The Freightos Baltic Index, which reflects freight rates for container shipping, has quadrupled in the last twelve months.
For this reason, American President Joe Biden recently lost his collar. Ship owners are taking advantage of this and raising prices hugely, he complained. He also accused him of fixing prices. “Every once in a while you learn something that makes you deeply angry. If the person was in front of you, you would want to hit them. No, I’m really serious,” Biden said.
High shipping costs
Biden was referring to freight companies based in Asia and Europe that share transportation capacity on major trade routes and currently enjoy immunity from U.S. antitrust laws. “These companies have raised their prices by as much as 1,000 percent,” he said, calling on the House of Representatives to pass the maritime reform bill that passed the Senate in March. This would allow the Federal Maritime Commission to limit fees charged by international shipping companies.
However, this does not help Lufthansa at the moment. Due to acute capacity shortages, shipments of German products are not reaching the US for flights home. According to a Lufthansa spokesperson, the warehouses for flights departing from the US are currently mostly empty. In such cases, local replacement products are loaded on board.