Originally Posted by
oliver2002
Due to the night curfew in Frankfurt, often you don't wait for passengers on delayed connecting flights anymore. Wouldn't it be reasonable to offer a waiver to rebook onto earlier feeder flights when you have days with expected delays?
You are correct that late night departures from Frankfurt can no longer wait for connecting passengers, since the DFS continues to strictly implement the night-time curfew.
For feeders with a high frequency it is certainly advisable, as far as your time permits, to book an earlier feeder flight in order to have a buffer for any possible delays.
A standing waiver to allow the rebooking of passengers onto earlier flights doesn't exist. The night curfew is well known by now, and the customer decides to choose a certain connecting flight and the conditions of the ticket. Only if there is concrete danger of missing the connection the station may decide to rebook and waive the charges. In all other cases the original fare conditions of the ticket apply.
I am a bit of a new resident in Germany to know how the local politics work, but I am going to assume from this answer that, politically speaking, some crazy lemmings blowing whistles in Terminal 1 (who do however have a legitimate issue to make people aware of) will always trump the complaints from passengers who miss their connections because of (perhaps overly) strict night curfews.
In the English-speaking world, a better answer to this question might include, in addition to stating the policy, words to the effect that LH works within the given constraints to help as many passengers as possible make their connections, and to encourage adversely affected passengers to write/call to a government representative to increase awareness of how the curfew concretely affects
travelers and inquire as to whether in light of this knee-jerk reaction to noise complaints, some compromise can be worked out going forward to minimize inconvenience of both delayed passengers and the surrounding community during IRROPS, to the mutual long-term benefit of both...blah, blah, blah
The answer as written probably loses a bit in translation, but to my Anglo-ears, it sounds a bit like, "...there is nothing we can do about night curfew. It is your responsibility to be aware of the curfew, and to take its effects into account when booking, not ours..."
Like some of the other responses I get occasionally from LH, this answer leaves me questioning not necessarily the content, but rather the way in which is is presented...@:-)
A couple of us spoke a bit about the night curfew with Huber at the Dialogue event, and I got the impression that the local government is more part of the problem than part of the solution. Something was said by someone (I don't remember if it was an LH person or not) to the effect that it is almost necessary in Frankfurt politics to be "a little bit" unfriendly towards FraPort. I guess most transiting passengers don't vote in Hessen, so their inconvenience is not of interest to the local rule making authorities...