-
Hello all,
Lufthansa recently cancelled my 06:30 flight to FRA to connect onto my flight to BEI at 10:40 and arrives at 15:30.
The only other flight they’ve offered is one of their flights in the afternoon, and arrives in BEI at 02:50, on the next calendar day !
With this in mind, I thought I’d go a day earlier on the same flight times as the original I’d booked onto, but that flight is now sold out.
There other flight’s available, but one such flight is in the evening, LHR to MUC overnight layover there, then a flight to FRA the next morning, to connect to the flight to BEI !
There are other options to get to BEI at 15:30 on the day I booked to arrive, but none can get around an overnight layover in the one the airports. Bizarrely enough there’s no flight options that include an overnight layover in FRA.
What are my legal rights here, I should be able to argue that they need to get me to the destination on the date I originally booked to travel, and I don’t want any overnight layovers
Of course I won’t be able to get them to put me on another airlines’ flight (a non Lufthansa group flight, or an airline the group don’t have agreements with), my only bet is to book with them, then demand they payout which they won’t do easily…
Thank to anyone who can help !
Hi JonathanC
not disputing your rights but what is the impact to you of arriving these 11 hours later? Is it the early morning arrival which would deprive you of sleep and ruin either your first day or two’s holiday, or deliver you in an impossible state to do a business meeting that same morning?
I’m just thinking that with flights to Ethiopia (BEI) relatively few, it may be that Lufthansa has fulfilled the option you have, to insist on being rerouted onto the reasonably closest flight available to your original timing. It may be that practically there is nothing on any airline that would get you there any closer to your original arrival time with close to the same departure, than you’ve been offered.
Have they given you at least 14 days notice of cancellation, so you’re not due compensation? If you are able to take their suggested alternative flights, then wondering if you’d still have a right to delay compensation as your arrival would now be well over 5 hours later than your originally booked flight set.
@Lady London OP means BEY not BEI.
Lufthansa have a very good rebooking policy, for schedule changes its any LH Group flight, one year from departure, free of charge. Ticket validity is irrelevant. I can see this is a schedule change for the summer season, as LH1306 switches to the morning during summer.
It sounds like you only need one seat, you could always waitlist for the flight the day before if its operating (and not full because its cancelled). They need to waitlist you in the highest booking class within your compartment which is J and Y for business and economy class. There’s a very good chance this could clear, especially if you have Star Alliance Gold status and due to a short-haul configuration the cabin can be changed easily plus your trip is obviously many weeks away.
The flights travel dates are towards the end of April – start of May.
I’ve rebooked onto LH1308, although given it’s times, I’m not all looking forward to the flight, and I think it’s going to be overbooked, since the flights the day before are all sold out.
I’m just a bit unsure about what the legal rights of the passenger are in these types of circumstances, if I had young children for instance I wouldn’t be tolerating them trying to put me on flights with these times end of story, and wouldn’t think twice about taking legal action if I had to book with another airline to recover the costs from LH.
I’ve not used them before, and they’re not doing at all well. My brother used them to fly to Bali a couple of months ago and hated the flight (he flew in Economy) although he loved the Singapore Airlines flight connection, his return home was with Swiss, and he didn’t complain about them, so LH need to take a good look at themselves
I suppose the difficult situation in BEY is why the route isn’t 2x daily on most days and you’ve got caught up in that. As far as your rights, you’re entitled to free replacement flights closely matching your original itinerary per Article 8 EC261. LH are pretty good when it comes to issuing claims if you’d needed to. The closet I can see was ME, who have a daily flight, ME202 dep 13:00 arr 19:35.
Lufthansa is pretty good for rebooking. They have the most flexible rebooking rules when it comes to flights within their own Group, that is Austrian, Swiss, Brussels, Eurowings and Edelweiss, as well as Lufthansa itself. You can select a new flight up until one year of the outbound departure-this is only the decision deadline, the flight can be as far as for sale. Ignoring ticket validity. Compare this to BA’s +-3/+14 days flexibility, enforced ticket validity, all backed by CEDR…
Despite their exceptional network, unfortunately rebooking to OS, LX, SN and the others doesn’t help as its only a LH mainline route!
If you’re regular on the BEY route, and you could find well-priced replacement flights I would have considered leaving the ticket untouched to use it on another date.
Obviously you’ve made your decision now, and there’s no further rights to rebooking unless the flights are cancelled or delayed again. I do hope you rebooked the LH921 to something else so you’re not sat about in FRA all day?
I rebooked onto LH915. I could’ve done LH917, but that’s cutting it a bit fine, all it takes is a bad day at FRA
They’ve got two flights per day, and I was booked onto the earlier flight, but my connection to FRA from T2 departing 06:30 was cancelled, and there weren’t any other options to make the earlier flight to BEI
I’m not a regular on the route, I’m going there for a holiday ! (I’m part of an organised tour. I’m definitely looking to forward to Lebanese cuisine, and although I don’t usually drink hot drinks since my throat can’t handle it, I usually leave them a while until they’re cooler, tea is also something else there.
Going back to flights, I understand what you say about Lufthansa being good and rebooking, but only when it’s with themselves, I yesterday asked one of their CSA via live chat if they could put me on a TK flight as they’re a fellow Star Alliance airline, the travel times are during daytime hours, the CSA asked for the flight numbers (at this point I hadn’t mentioned which airline it was, although asked about other Star Alliance airlines), but said that couldn’t be rebooked free of charge, I once asked BA to do something similar and they wouldn’t do so, something that annoys me, and something I hope the management of the three groups are aware of airlines doing, since each group is meant to bring their airlines closer and work alongside each other more (I haven’t been in this sort of situation with a SkyTeam airline, but I can imagine theirs use similar tactics
I’ve also seen from the cost of the ticket breakdown how heavily taxed the route is, even you book a simple return via AMM (or AMN I honestly can’t remember off the top of my head which one of those two it is!) the cost of the flights is nearly as expensive as flying from the UK…
“I hope the management of the three groups are aware of airlines doing, since each group is meant to bring their airlines closer and work alongside each other more (I haven’t been in this sort of situation with a SkyTeam airline, but I can imagine theirs use similar tactics”
My experience with LH Group is they are slow to offer other alliance partner flights; though personally never been a problem for me as when they rebook in their own group it’s usually to a higher fare class so a points deluge. On SkyTeam, I have been proactively offered a direct DL route when weather would have affected a connecting KL itinerary.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
Popular articles this week:
