-
I’ve got a flight booking from Dublin to Singapore via Frankfurt flying with Lufthansa for the short haul leg and Singapore airlines for the long haul leg. This is a ticket booked in first class. My original departure date was Monday, however, both flights have been cancelled due to the nationwide strike in Germany.
Lufthansa have offered to rebook me on Swiss first class departing on Wednesday instead. There are no Lufthansa group flights available for any other days apart from that. I have offered to be rerouted from Heathrow where there is availability on my original departure date, however, Lufthansa’s policy is to only allow a change of airport up to 250 miles away.
Unfortunately there is no availability from Manchester, Edinburgh or Glasgow with Lufthansa group airlines for departures around my original travel date.
I can, however, see plenty of star alliance availability in first from Heathrow or first class on non-star alliance carriers from Dublin for the days surrounding my original travel dates.
What are my rights here? I’m aware that the regulation states that I’m entitled to rerouting on an alternative carrier in an equivalent class of travel but does that extend to non Lufthansa group airlines and how should I proceed since Lufthansa are unwilling to rebook me on an alternative carrier?
There isn’t a straightforward or black and white answer to your questions.
On the one hand the rules are generous but they are not overly prescriptive, so subject to interpretation and then you have the practicality of enforcing them. LH should consider rerouting you on a non LH group and/or non Star airline but if you are unable to persuade them to do so, you either have to accept the least bad option or buy new tickets and claim the money back which is risky. There’s no specific entitlement to be rerouted from another gateway.
I suspect that because LH has so many cancellations to deal with they are being even less cooperative than normal.
BA have taken all flights to / from Germany on Monday off sale so no wonder availability is tight.
This strike would also explain why reward in entry was pulled for next week on German routes – there was a thread about this earlier in the week.
Unfortunately I don’t see many options available to you as unlike most air related strikes this is airport rather than airline related.
Thank you both for the advice. I thought I’d follow up here with my experience.
We made quite a few calls to our travel agent and Lufthansa directly to resolve this issue on Friday and Saturday. We were offered a few options including a rerouting from London which we accepted until the confirmation email came through that showed we’d been downgraded. A quick call back and that option was cancelled. We decided to hold out on accepting the revised routing for a few days and were glad we did as availability opened up on the Swiss first class option on Tuesday evening meaning we were only delayed by 24 hours. A quick call to Lufthansa and we got a confirmed reservation on the Tuesday evening flight.
Unfortunately we couldn’t find a valid ticket number attached to the booking and at this point I started to worry with check in time approaching. I messaged LH on social media and phoned and I was told that I had a confirmed reservation and ticket for travel on the 11th March. I wasn’t entirely sure I believed them though.
Check in time came and we were of course unable to check in as I expected. Yet another call to the Lufthansa general reservations line and I encountered the most helpful person thus far who happened to recognise the problem immediately, asked if I’d had any charges on my card for the rebooking fee. When I mentioned the cancellation of our original flight he went straight back to the ticketing team and worked to get our ticket reissued. Around 90 minutes later, after plenty of refreshing of the booking details on the Lufthansa website we saw a valid ticket number appear and were able to check in without any issue.
A few things to note. For those who are affected by LH group cancellations, they publish this helpful guide on what they’re able to reticket for SKCHG (T-2 or earlier cancellations) or INVOL (T-1 or later cancellations) here for travel agents which is a useful read. https://www.lufthansaexperts.com/shared/files/lufthansa/public/mcms/folder_102/folder_3625/file_152012.pdf
Only a handful of people I spoke to on the phone were helpful. As always if you find you’re getting nowhere HUACA. I only found out that Lufthansa offers a dedicated phone line for first class bookings at the point that I couldn’t check in. At this stage I think I’d spent hours on hold on the general reservations line waiting to speak to someone.
If you find an agent who is willing to reserve something, it doesn’t actually mean it’ll be ticketed. The Lufthansa rebooking rules state that you’re only allowed a route change up to 250 miles from your original origin, meaning that the LHR option we were offered would have never been ticketed.
@bruinbrown – that’s great that you have been able to resolve this without too much delay from the strike. Persistence pays off but it’s amazing that both with BA and LH one is expected to chase them because they don’t have proper rebooking/re-ticketing procedures.
Well done for your perseverance, the truly depressing thing is the HUACA. Why can’t companies actually invest in training their staff properly, and perhaps even giving annual refresher courses on changes or to cover rarities that may have been forgotten…
I know, cost, but think of the time saving, maybe the bottom line wouldn’t be so bad.The one time I had to engage with Lufthansa on a complex ticket issue was very difficult, it was very hard to find someone even willing to help. What did seem to help was picking the German options on the phone, they spoke English and seemed more skilled than the agents I was otherwise getting though no one could actually fix it.
I actually got the issue resolved by finding an email for group bookings from my country of departure. Within an hour someone called me back and did what I required in a couple of minutes.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
