YuropFlyer

Hi ellylex

Since the lurker seems to be temporarily (or permanently?) unavailable, let me try to help you on your questions. Hope you don't mind. LX on Facebook usually don't mind

You say they don't speak English. Is there any other common European language they do speak, like German, French, Spanish, Italian? I can only assume that if you're not able to communicate at all with any staff, things might become very difficult if things go wrong (as they apparently did) - since the language barrier will be rather difficult to cross, which appears is what happened here. But let me try to elaborate further down.


They weren't hold up at customs, but possibly by immigration. Which they never actually should have go through for a connection from Non-Schengen (UK) to Non-Schengen (Russia) country. At least till 11pm (and from 5am onward) there is always immigration counters open. When there are irrops (like the last 2 days), possibly much longer. No one is "locked in", unless they simply can't get out of the Non-Schengen zone due to having no valid papers to do so. Back to the details of your case:

LX325 indeed only arrived at 9.53pm yesterday (31st May) - with LX1324 being scheduled at 9.45pm.

BUT.. Here is the major catch. LX1324 actually only departed at 10.49pm, making the connection entirely possible. LX often intentionally delays their late evening departures, since many flights bringing in passengers to ZRH are delayed (LX has extremely tight turnaround times, which often causes delays to build up during busy days, and causing LX to have a not-so-stellar on-time record. Regular delay for LX325 is 20-40min, according to Flightstats. But lets get back to topic..)

Since apparently according to LX's data, the connection should have been made by your friends, they simply didn't had them on the radar, and wouldn't really advise staff on having anything prepared. Could you please elaborate what exactly happened? Were they not going to the gate shown on the screens? Were the screens actually showing the LX1324 flight to have been departed already? I think it's important to get their side of the story on what happened on the ground after arrival.

The flight to DME took off from the D Gates, and often UK-arrivals also use D Gates, which would have made the transport as easy as pie, even on very tight connections.

Well, apparently the agent saw the same data that I was able to pull up from free internet sources, that the connection was perfectly possible, with about 1hr from arrival to departure, and therefore considered the passengers as no-shows (ie, the ticket would need to be re-issued)

As a rule of thumb, calling in a call center, especially for a friend (they're not really authorized to do changes unless it's their travel agent or someone from the group calling themselves, in my experience) is ALWAYS inferior that to contact staff at the airport, due to them basically having no idea on whats really going on at the ground. Well, considering I was nearby ZRH airport yesterday evening, I can give you an insight (something that neither you as the caller, nor the call center agent, who isn't in ZRH either, could, only your friends at the airport (and local staff) could.

There was massive rain / hail just over the airport area, for the second day in a row. So strong all operations had to be stopped for approx 30 minutes. As you can imagine, this cause quite some chaos, and LOTS of calls to Swiss as well. Not a surprise that you've had trouble reaching anyone.

Well, outside business hours, the calls indeed are taken by off-site callcenters (actually, forget about talking to a person in Switzerland on the hotline unless you're a higher-up tier in their FFP, and even then..) - and ZRH is closed overnight customer service hotline related. It's not a true 24hrs airport, after all.


Lets keep some facts straight: Your friends apparently lacked allowance to enter the Schengen area. This has nothing to do with Swiss. At this time of the day, also no "special arrangements" could be done (this sometimes happens, Swiss immigration is a bit less strict than German ones, who are not letting ANYONE in, no matter what - but at 10pm+ in the evening, that was simply too late to organize), and considering LX basically thought your friends could have made the connection, they weren't even ready to prepare anything in advance.

The transit hotel is small (Overnight transit for passengers not able to enter Schengen is NOT the main design of ZRH airport) - having it sold out when bad weather hits ZRH - twice in two days - is completely normal.

There are 24hrs available food dispensers, and Swiss tab water is perfectly drinkable, too. They were definitely not let without access to food and water.

They'll not get much out of this. IF the connection was impossible to make (due to actually the departing aircraft's gate having been closed earlier than what the data I've access to suggest) then LX owns them duty of care. IE, to pay for expenses they had for food, phone calls.. no cash compensation, since ZRH airport was hit by bad weather (and yes, it was really bad, this will NOT be one of the many cases where LX weasels out of having to pay compensation putting weather in front - it was really weather)

If it was their fault - ie they had to make an easy transfer but were too slow doing so (say, doors open at 10pm, gate closure at 10.30pm, both a D gates) then they were lucky to actually having been rebooked for free, and not having had their whole ticket to be re-issued.

Basically I'd be interested in knowing which arrival gate they had (D or E gates) - and what they actually did when they exited the aircraft, where they went etc. - that's quite crucial in understanding about what happened on ground.

Lounge staff isn't allowed to let in pax due to long layovers unless advised to do so. I've experienced similar requests by pax, and they were usually sent away (guested some in, whenever I could help people who really looked like they could need it, though)

Pax having missed their flights are usually (besides a new boarding pass) given a voucher for food at an airport restaurant / café. Did this not happen?