HadesNL

First of all best wishes to everyone!

Just back from a 10 days hop to Chiang Mai(CNX) and Phuket (HKT) for the festive holidays. On the way to Thailand i had experienced LX's ZRH procedures in case of missed connection. My post here is to inform other passengers if they are in the same situation.

My PNR holded: Business Class: AMS-ZRH-BKK (LX) -CNX-HKT-BKK (TG) and back on LX.

Departing from AMS, Checkin-desk informed us of a delay of 30min due to late incoming arrival of aircraft out of Zurich. Eventually it arrived 1,5 hours later. We were sure about missing our connecting LX flight to BKK and i informed the crew onboard AMS-ZRH. 15 min before arrival in ZRH we were told that we would be able to make our connection. Other passengers to other destinations were informed that they would be rebooked or that they had a thight connection and had to hurry towards their connecting gates.

Eventually we landed and arrived at the end of the new B-dock which was on the opposite of the airport of dock E. Already thinking it would be impossible to catch the flight i asked the crew if they were sure i would make it. They told me ground staff would hold the aircraft for us.

Upon disembarking the BKK flight showed on the FIDS as still boarding, when running to the immigration at the heidi trainstation, we were held back by immigration stating the flight had already left as we were deemed to misconnect due to our arrival at the farside of the B-dock. I guess a slight miscommunication between ground staff and aircrew occured. A bit dissapointing that if they knew this in advance someone of groundstaff could have informed us at our arrival gate.

Nevertheless immigration was very helpfull and walked us over to the transferdesk handled by Swissport. It was busy with other passengers who missed their connecting flights but our agent was very swift and courteous. She saw that the next LX flight would leave exactly 24hrs later but she offered to rebook us on the earlier TG flight instead. Very attentive! She told us that ZRH aiport had suffered a bit of delay due to snow and aircfraft de-icing waiting times. I felt she delt with our situation very proffessionally.

We were handed an accomodation voucher (+dinner/breakfast) for the Raddisson Blu Zurich Airport Hotel and told to pick up our luggage at the arrival hall. There someone from the luggage handling service had already kept the luggage from misconnecting passengers aside and we walked through the trainstation to the hotel. Room was pleasent and the following day TG check-in staff were already informed about our rebooking.

Conclusion: if you miss your connecting flight, i'm happy to say LX provides swift rebooking and accomodation/food services. Only gripe is that no groundstaff is present to inform passengers at the arrival gate so you are left a bit in the dark if you can really make it to your connecting flight.

htb

I'm glad you were satisfied with the service, but when the incoming flight to AMS was obviously so late that it was unlikely that you would make your connection, wouldn't it have been better service to rebook you already in Amsterdam, either on a direct flight or another connecting flight?

HTB.

HadesNL

The checkin staff at AMS got the wire that the delay was only 30 min. So no alarmbells there yet. The Menzies/servisairlounge staff (at whom i watched reading her sms on her mobile for 2 hrs) are just third party lounge operators so they can't handle any information requests whatsoever. The gate agents were outsourced as well and said to ask the cabin crew during flight.

motto:
Outsourcing services at AMS: cheap but useless and incompetent in irrops