Lufthansa, strikes and canceled flights. My experience with refunds and compensation
In the past few days I have been, like tens of thousands of other travelers, a victim of one of the many days of strike [...]
Lufthansa
Star Alliance
In the past few days I have stayed, as have tens of thousands of other travelers, victim of one of many days of strike action by Lufthansa workers. I should have traveled on the days of the worst protest, the one that grounded all (or almost all) flights between March 7 and 8.
In this article:
Unfortunately, my itinerary had turned out to be "unsalvageable," or as they say in these cases. no possibility of reprotection had emerged.
In many cases, for medium-haul flights due to the ability to take advantage of other airlines in the group such as Swiss, Austrian and Brussels a small proportion of passengers were diverted to other routes and managed to reach their destination.
In my case it had not been possible to find alternative solutions and I had therefore been forced to cancel the flight and find an alternative method of getting home from London. Obviously in this case all the appropriate protections were triggered by the company.
Timely information
Did you get your flight cancelled, miss your connection, land late?
You could get up to 600€ compensation per person
In a chaos, like that of early March, It could not have been easy for the company to respond to all the requests from all over the world. I was in Thailand when I received the notice of cancellation.
I tried using the chatbot, but given the lack of alternative flights I had to fall back on the call center. LH has a number for practically every country where it operates, and this in terms of cost for the CC contact was very important. Of course my call lasted, between waiting and talking to the attendant, over 40 minutes, but at least it cost me almost nothing.
I have received several emails, notifications in the app and also from my other tools that I use to track my flights (e.g., App in the Air). In this respect truly top assistance.
Flight canceled, immediate refund
When I saw that there was no possibility of reprotection. I made the cancellation request directly from the app, mine was a round-trip ticket and, to be impacted was the return.
The refund came automatically in direct re-credit mode to the same credit card I had used to pay for the ticket.
Statutory compensation for hardship
European traveler protection laws are the most important in the world. The various articles leave no room for interpretation, in these cases the company is at fault and the passenger is entitled to compensation.
Again. I must say that Lufthansa behaved as a super serious company, I can't say from 5 stars because it does not have this Skytrax recognition, but it was really a matter of clicks.
I filled out a special form on the company's website and less than 24 hours later in my email there was the outcome of the request.
In my case, the rules provide for compensation of 250€, the flight cancellation having occurred with less than 7 gg notice and the flight being short/medium haul (London/Milan). Credit arrived less than 5 days after request.
In conclusion
Certainly an inconvenience, in my case contained, but truly exemplary behavior In Lufthansa's handling of the consequences.
