Miles & More (Lufthansa, Austrian, Swiss, and other partners) - LH Cancelled 1st Leg Flight on Award Ticket Issued by CO

Hi, I searched the thread but none of the posts exactly matched the situation...

Used 60K CO miles for award tkt for daughter LYS-FRA-IAH-FLL, LH/CO/CO.

LH cancelled first leg this morning and gave her a breakfast voucher and a kiss-off. :eek:

I rebooked her w/CO, CDG-IAH-FLL, CO/CO but it cost me 25,000 more miles to do so. And now she will a) take a train to Paris and b) stay in a hotel overnight to make her morning flight on time.

Is there anything I can do to recover the miles and/or the cost of her additional travel? Please advise and thanks for any advice you can offer.

LH cancelled first leg this morning and gave her a breakfast voucher and a kiss-off. :eek:


Sounds strange... no attempt to rebook on LH's part? They are required by law to accommodate the cancelled pax on an alternative if they cancel the flight.

Worst case you contact CO once yopu learn of a cancellation (in advance) and in such cases CO (the issuing agent) needs to accomodate. But in this case LH would have rebooked.

The only offer they gave her would have stranded her in Frankfurt for days, and they said they had to follow the exact same routing since it was a "free" ticket... also the counter agent had 250 pax in line waiting for rebooking, so she didn't push very hard to try to help the kid.

Hmm... then the harsh statement didn't apply... I would taken the next flight to FRA and battled it out on there instead of leaving the desk... YMMV, I suppose.

All todays flights to the east coast, including the direct FRA MIA A380 flight are currently allowing WL for award space, with relatively empty cabins. She could have just asked for WL and cleared from the standby list.

I guess afterwards you know better. In any case, since the 1st leg was cancelled you entitled to a full refund. What did CO have to say on the matter?

This was not a "free" ticket in the strictest sense. Believe me, LH was going to get paid by CO for the segment flown. With money. :rolleyes:

I would have thrown a major fit. "Breakfast voucher"? What the eff is that? Get me to my destination as per the contract of carriage! :mad: :mad: :mad:

I hate to take over the OP's thread but if this were to happen to a person with a F ticket would the folks at the FCT accommodate the person better?

I had a similiar experience with LH. At least on remote stations or even non-LH stations I found groundstaff incredibly unwilling to help. However, LH customer service afterwards handled matters relatively well. Never had to wait longer than 10 days for reimbursements of my expenses.
Last time I received a nicely written letter from some customer service head, explaining his regrets and actually adressing my complaints.

I would suggest writing a letter to LH, describing the situation at the station and that the agents were totally unwilling to help your daughter (depending on her age, a little wining about her being left alone in a foreign country might help). I would then add all related expenses and give them a deadline for reimbursing you.

Good luck
Best

From experience you don't need an F ticket to get much better treatment - i.e. re-routing or reboooking into any open booking class (same cabin) on the next available flight.

Sounds like poor service from the ticket desk in Lyon (I suspect they are subcontracted by LH, and confused the rules for rebooking due to cancellation vs. rebooking due to customer request) and also Continental (for selling another ticket and not just rebooking onto next available flight for free).

I am not an expert as to what compensation you are entitled to, apart from to say CO should refund the cost of the existing ticket.

Any flight starting or landing in an EU country are regulated by the EU passenger protection chart.

She can claim up to 600€ in damages + all the expenses paid.

info here http://ec.europa.eu/transport/passenger-rights/en/07-air-cancellation.html

Once your daughter is back you should send a Fax to LH explaining the situation and claim for the damages plus expenses (including thhe money valus of teh 25k points CO) and do not forget to say that you will contact the French and German aviation authority in case of late remboursement.

Ask you daughter to get an invoice with HER name in all the Hotels (the train ticket is an invoice itself)

Good luck to your daughter.

You are not entitled to the 600 Euros ++, as it is not clear with how much delay your daughter would have reached the final destination.
As it was just an 733, there were max 150 in front of the desk (still a lot).

I am pretty sure LH would have found a good solution, when she would have insisted a little bit more. Never leave the desk, before you have a acceptable solution. Being too soft, an airlines may regard it as an voluntary step-back of the passenger.

This was not a "free" ticket in the strictest sense. Believe me, LH was going to get paid by CO for the segment flown. With money. :rolleyes:

I would have thrown a major fit. "Breakfast voucher"? What the eff is that? Get me to my destination as per the contract of carriage! :mad: :mad: :mad:
It is my understanding that LH was willing to get her to FRA on the next possible flight. The one booked was canceled, most likely due to the ILS outage today at FRA airport.

It is well known, that outstations can't do that much for for the connection flights (once they are missed), in particular when it is not on LH metal. But what I don't get is, why the daughter and OP (performed actually the rebooking, so OP was involved into that decision) didn't chose for the flight to FRA and then got it sorted out there. I'm pretty sure LH at FRA would have searched for a way to bring the OP's daughter to FLL without significant delays. It was not possible in LYS, too bad. But such happens every day. Then fly into the hub and proceed from there. Done.

Any flight starting or landing in an EU country are regulated by the EU passenger protection chart.

She can claim up to 600€ in damages + all the expenses paid.
Just to note, that the €600 in compensation doesn't apply for 'extraordinary circumstance', which I think an ILS outage at FRA may be considered as. The duty of care (hotels/food etc) still applies though.

It is my understanding that LH was willing to get her to FRA on the next possible flight. The one booked was canceled, most likely due to the ILS outage today at FRA airport.

It is well known, that outstations can't do that much for for the connection flights (once they are missed), in particular when it is not on LH metal. But what I don't get is, why the daughter and OP (performed actually the rebooking, so OP was involved into that decision) didn't chose for the flight to FRA and then got it sorted out there. I'm pretty sure LH at FRA would have searched for a way to bring the OP's daughter to FLL without significant delays. It was not possible in LYS, too bad. But such happens every day. Then fly into the hub and proceed from there. Done.

Yea, that makes sense. OP jumped the gun by getting CO and an extra 25K miles involved. OP's daughter would have been flown to FLL on the original ticket... eventually. ;)

I'm sure it's a coincidence but it looks like this afternoon's CO flight FRA-IAH was also cancelled (according to lufthansa.com) or delayed (according to flightstats.com).

This was not a "free" ticket in the strictest sense. Believe me, LH was going to get paid by CO for the segment flown. With money. :rolleyes:

I would have thrown a major fit. "Breakfast voucher"? What the eff is that? Get me to my destination as per the contract of carriage! :mad: :mad: :mad:

Unfortunately she is 22 years old, not a frequent flyer, unaware of the COC, and not an expert negotiator... even though she speaks fluent French, she has a US accent and I could hear the ticket agent in the background already "helping" the next pax while daughter was phoning me on East coast.

She is attending a family reunion that was Thursday-Monday and she works in France, so there was a time constraint. Ultimately, she will arrive 21 hours later than originally scheduled.

I'm sure it's a coincidence but it looks like this afternoon's CO flight FRA-IAH was also cancelled (according to lufthansa.com) or delayed (according to flightstats.com).

hehe

:rolleyes:

She could have just asked for WL and cleared from the standby list.

What did CO have to say on the matter?

She did not know her options and was not informed that she could take another carrier. She was hustled out of line ASAP.

CO didn't have much to say except please give me 25K more miles and we'll fly her from CDG.

At the very least happy to report she went wheels up a bit ago, albeit late due to MX... maybe she'll make it on time!

I would suggest writing a letter to LH, describing the situation at the station and that the agents were totally unwilling to help your daughter (depending on her age, a little wining about her being left alone in a foreign country might help). I would then add all related expenses and give them a deadline for reimbursing you.

That I will do.

:D:D:D Thanks for everyone's comments and suggestions, much appreciated. The most important thing is that she arrive safely, then I'll deal with the carrier issues...

And in the meantime, if anyone else has/had a similar situation and can advise remedies, I'm listening.

Cheers!

Never leave the desk, before you have a acceptable solution. Being too soft, an airlines may regard it as an voluntary step-back of the passenger.

Well, in this case, one has to know his/her entitlements.

I've seen too many passengers who demand things they're not entitled to.

Actually, I'd rather have her fly like she is then be a "DYKWIA" pax... so lesson learned. I'll coach her on polite and gentle insistence on remedy once she arrives.

Thanks again!

Actually, I'd rather have her fly like she is then be a "DYKWIA" pax... so lesson learned. I'll coach her on polite and gentle insistence on remedy once she arrives.

Thanks again!

My understanding of (northwestern) European culture is that a DYKWIA attitude seldom pays off here.

Polite and firm drives you a long way.

On your daughter's case: Such is life. You stumble and learn. So, good coaching for her. :)

My understanding of (northwestern) European culture is that a DYKWIA attitude seldom pays off here.




You might even say that such behavior is verboten...

You might even say that such behavior is verboten...

or at least not so smart :)

Sounds strange... no attempt to rebook on LH's part? They are required by law to accommodate the cancelled pax on an alternative if they cancel the flight.

Worst case you contact CO once yopu learn of a cancellation (in advance) and in such cases CO (the issuing agent) needs to accomodate. But in this case LH would have rebooked.

I just had LX cancel my F flight from YUL-ZRH when they dropped the Thursday flight from their schedule. I was offered protection on Wednesday's flight but cannot reschedule work plans. I asked about Friday but LX refuses to protect me in either F or C on that flight/day. Ended up booking LH F to MUC. However, when checking this new ticket, I noticed LH had downgraded my return FRA-BOS from F to C with no notice of the change. LH refuses to release any F seats between FRA or MUC to eastern NAmerica on the Saturday of my original booking. (AE was able to get me on, yecch UA F via IAD!)

Is this normal practice for LH? My understanding is they must open up a protected seat even if reward capacity is full. (According to the AE and CO websites there are some F seats that day, but the AE agent told me there was a glitch in the LH system that is showing premium seats that are not available for redemption. Is this BS and AE trying to cover up?)