Originally Posted by
ellylex
My friends who do not speak English were flying today LHR-ZHR-DME on Swiss, but their journey started in LAX the day before on United.
The first flight in Europe from LHR was delayed which caused missing connection. Flight LX325 arrived around 9.30 pm to Zurich. Noone assisted them and customs left and now they are literally locked in the transit zone. There was one rep from the hotel that I spoke with, he tried calling Swiss in the aiport but they could care less and did not pick up the phone.
Customs are open until 23:00 (they are open longer as far as I know) at which point the airport will close at which point no passenger should still be in the airport (exception transit hotel).
1.5 hours to go through customs in Zurich at this time is more than enough, unless you have no visa to actually enter the shengen zone. (They seemed to have been allowed into the UK?)
But since they would have a flight to catch to DME they would not need to go through customs at all. I checked and the flight to DME (LX1324) was sheduled for 21:45 (31.05.18) yet was delayed and departed at 23:12 from gate D36: LX325 landed at 21:48 in ZRH and arrived at Gate D32? (literally the gate next to D36!) or a remote stand next to it(could you ask if they arrived directly at the terminal or were driven by bus?):
More than enough time to catch it.
I suspect with the given information that your friends probably did not know how to communicate with the staff and therefore missed their connection. (Only english and german signs)
Originally Posted by
ellylex
I started calling US number - and after awhile was able to rebook them. But they are spending 15 hrs at the airport. They were given a number in Switzerland which led to the same customer service but in different country - South Africa. Swiss rep was arrogant and stated that it is passengers fault?! for missing connection and not being able to go thru customs and hung up!!!!
reps that were trying to assist were in Fiji. Gave me number to ZHR, called it but security stated they are indeed closed!
That is despicable - to hold 3 people hostage in transit zone without even acknowleding their existence, w/o food and water and w/o accomodation (they could not go to the hotel in transit zone as it was "sold out" - probably other passengers were accomodated there).
Now I don't think I know enough about this case (Nationality? Are they allowed to enter the shengen zone without Visa? Do they have a Visa? How bad is communication? What language do they speak? Were the flights on one ticket? etc.)
But as mentioned above between 23:00 and 05:00 the airport is closed.
Originally Posted by
ellylex
What compensation can they seek at this point?
None. (The LHR-ZRH flight was delayed by only 1 hour and 53 minutes, compensation is due with 3 hours or longer and the missed connections seems to be entirely their fault.)
You should still try though and maybe (I don't think so) they will be helpful.
Are they still in ZRH? Or have they been able to continue their journey?