Thanks for your comments. That's exactly what I did - but to do it, I had to buy another carry-on and repack my stuff. I couldn't do that with no extra luggage to put it in at the gate. It was all small pieces in a carry-on bag.


Well, 2 (small but expensive) HD cameras, 2 external hard drives, a laptop, and iPad, a lot of small but valuable "gadgets" used for shooting and editing with nothing else than ON carry-on bag and a laptop bag... which ones do you choose? I couldn't make that choice at the gate while the crowd was already boarding.

Maybe I overreacted. I own a service business myself and I would immediately, without a second thought, fire an employee who treated a paying customer like that. Being on the other side of the equation on a daily basis, I always work to keep my own company's standards high and this is part of the reason I was in complete disbelief when I saw someone frontline, hired to deal with customers treat us like this. Not acceptable to me. To those of you on this forum who think this is "acceptable" behavior, maybe experiencing such a thing yourself will wake you up. It doesn't have to be the size or weight of your carry-on - what if you carefully picked your seats for you and your wife on your honeymoon trip and then your boarding pass shows 37C and 41E? How would you like a gate agent to deal with that? Tell you that it's "though, you can sit there or not fly?". It is the ATTITUDE this whole story is all about, not splitting hairs about who was right.

Lol, I see no conspiracy here. And I agree - I don't like posts that say "Beware..." "Don't use..." because you don't need to try to think or make decisions for others, they can do it for themselves. It's usually one person's bad experience. I tried to state my own story as it happened and didn't try to encourage anyone to stay away from LH because of MY experience - I think that would be silly. Everyone should make up his/her own mind about a company. I "contributed" my experience as raw material, but I wasn't particularly trying to influence anyone with it. Probably the biggest reason for posting it (I have to admit) was to try to "get even" with them. They treated me in a way that was unacceptable for me, I posted the story here as a matter of public record. If you are happy with LH, good for you. It is a big world with a lot of options.

LOL, this is hilarious! My wife mentioned on the way home that it is especially ridiculous as we are both pretty skinny (less than 130 pounds each) and some pax are heavier than we would be with our checked in luggage attached to us :-) Let me try this next time :-) May look suspicious taking off from Hawaii or FL, but they can't say anything, can they? :-) It is not against the rules to have "some stuff" in your pockets. :-)

I agree but I don't know why they picked me? I was the ONLY person at the gate to have to repack the carry on and mine was WITHIN the measurements!!! Many people with larger garment bags or 3 carry ons walked right past me on the plane. So I was singled out by the Lufthansa gate agent, I jsut don't know why? Maybe my shirt color, mt shoes, my face, my underwear???

I just have learned over my 20 years of flying more than 1K miles per year that gate agents (no matter what airline) are very close to a god. They can help or hurt tremendously.

I am (and will remain) my only employer :-)

A lot of things can happen and if LH would be my ONLY choice, I would probably use them - but only if I had NO other choice. I definitely won't fly with them on my own choice - actually, my next overseas flight is on BA. I haven't flown them for years as I was sticking to *A. I will still fly on US on domestic flights - despite their metal being not as nice as some of the other US carriers, and I am sick of the same black pepper chips and cranberry-nuts-mix they give you on First, I am getting top notch SERVICE from them as a Chairman - close to 100% first class upgrades (37 out of 38 domestic flights), always helpful phone reps, even special requests (when I have them) accommodated as possible, etc. I think there is a world of difference in how US and German airlines think about service. What LH Ground does is the "irreducible minimum" - if they did anything less for their passengers, their planes wouldn't fly. There is no better way to fly? I am so happy that there are plenty of choices that are a hell of a lot better.

Just because you don't like it, we can still talk about it, can't we? Not like anyone FORCED you to REPEATEDLY visit this thread... if you don't want to hear it, feel free to never visit this thread again - problem solved!

You are mixing up my posting an nycdude88's. I said I would never fly LH again and I DID since then switch over to OW, so I am not stuck with *A and LH any more.

No, not on Lufthansa. You can have a carry-on OR a laptop bag OR a camera. ONLY ONE PIECE. Hard to believe, but it's true.

How is LH better than that - with their allowance of only one piece and 8kg max?

As for closing this thread, I still advocate this issue, since I do not see any point of this discussion. Both you and other posters have made up their minds to not fly LH any more, and since we are not working for LH, it's not our business to convince you to do otherwise. Apart from either not being willing to disclose the complete story or just stating facts very emotionally, I can't understand where this discussion will lead to. And using your parlance, I am "not FORCING you" to agree with me on this. I am just suggesting to do something to avoid pointless discussions.

Only if you end up on the small regional aircrafts like Avro Jet, Dash 8 or CRJ.

As I said, if you have important equipment as hand luggage, plan ahead. With proper casing, there is no reason to not give up the equipment you described.

LH luggage guide says:
"
Additional items which are allowed in the cabin

In addition to your hand baggage and technical appliances you may take the following items into the cabin:
html_list

* A handbag, wrist bag or small bag (or small laptop bag) and their content
* A coat, shawl or blanket
* A small camera or a pair of binoculars
* An appropriate amount of reading material for the journey
* A infant carrier and baby food for the flight
* Crutches or other orthopedic aids you are depending on"

So you can get up to two regular sized items per class of service (business or first) and a personal item like a laptop bag.

To the OP: I think you committed a capital faux by actually agreeing with one of the GA's options. To his mantra "shed or stay" you should have chanted back that you wanted to get on. After agreeing with him to cancel your ticket (for miles' sake), it is like a wonder that they let you fly at all for a mere 200 dollar charge.
While there is something to this, there are alternatives. Such as being right or being able to create a zoo. Inflicting a major inconvenience on the airline also helps... but the king's way is of course to make the GA believe that - if left behind - you will stalk them for the day, then murder them and all relatives in the most ritual possible way ... all without actually saying it. They will gladly haul you out of their sight ....

On a more realistic note: of course the most likely way to succeed is to agree with them formally. Give them a token item to check in, pack some stuff in your coat, some in a personal item. That even works for the malicious droids SQ hires as ground hogs, I am sure it shall pacify an LH agent.
While the first part is true, the bolded (by me) statement is utter nonsense. Status is next to meaningless on LH, they could not care less about their own elites.
Yes that does happen. It even happened to me as a 1K on a UA operated flight. But never did a GA then invent a threat-story about canceling a ticket and the likes. Once I was accommodated on the next flight free of cost, at all other times I was let aboard shortly after.
Ah come on! You live in SIN too where customer service on the ground is a concept entirely alien to the whole nation and still you get things done. Managing employees is a bit an art and while LH is riddled with foul apples, pears, and watermelons, but the variety of opponents you shall encounter is still my more larger than you make it look here.

I very much agree with you when it comes to Lufthansa. It is very often the wrong attitude which the LH staff have.

Changing the seats and giving the old ones back is something I experience from time to time with Swiss (and to a lesser extent with LH)

Wow, lots of agressiveness in this thread, LH brings out the worst in folks!

"BTW, just to put the oversell situation in perspective - this happened to me and wife once on Air France. Not only did they apologize, they gave us Business Class on that trip, and 2 free econ tickets on the next trip. Now that is how you treat your customers!!! "

... I had a similar experience flying KLM from Dar, I did have to push them a bit!

Other than they will bungle it or have it stolen @ beautiful FRA you mean?

I had items destroyed in armoured cases. Once a steel suitcase wit 12kg empty weight was collapsed by a vehicle (judging from the tread across it). LH ZRH initially wanted to brush it off as a "dent".
The oddest one was that I once barely managed to get a seat on ZRH-FRA on a very full flight with a check-in agent making up tons of silly excuses why she could not check me it.
When I climbed aboard and planted myself in the seat, an elderly not-so-gentle-man showed me his BP which displayed the same seat number as mine. I first had a physical struggle with him as I did not want to give him my BP. Then the cheeky purser asked me to vacate the seat. The plane appeared to be full, so I refused. Only when she called the captain and when I wrote down both names, did they budge and offloaded the other pax. That was a close call .

That seems to happen more often than people would be led to believe. My parents were on the 747 (to SIN) in C and after boarding found that two other pax had taken their seats - turns out that LH had allocated the exact same seats to them. Strange how the check-in system could allow for that, and how no red flags came up when BPs are processed upon boarding...

Anyway, the lady in charge onboard swiftly took action, and as C was completely full... she invited my parents to the upper deck.

So the moral of the story is: even if you don't get an op-up at the check-in desk, even if you don't get op-up'd upon boarding... you might get lucky and get an impromptu upgrade once you're on the plane.

Or for the less fortunate, as Weero's example shows, you might get removed from the plane at the very last instant.

Stuff happens. Gate agents wield a great deal of power. If you fly a lot you will experience the "treatment". In spite of my experience it still catches me off guard when I get slammed.
Sometimes I go to the trouble to write the carrier and I usually get a "we are so sorry" letter and some miles. It doesn't undo the damage.
I once showed up at the gate for a LH flight at FRA (within Europe) with two small bookbags. I checked in with the gate agent to get my seat assignment with my two bookbags in tow.
At the gate during boarding the same agent exploded when I attempted to board with the two bookbags. I was told to board with only one bag or stay. Fortunately I was able to repack the smaller bookbag into the larger of the two. I was the last to board. Surely this could have been taken care of before the last minute. In the end it is the attack dog attitude that bites.
I work hard to show up early and keep a low profile: no special requests or inquiries to the gate agents. They are very busy and sometimes they lose it.

Unless your HON, where LH does care a lot.

But you're right, LH does not care about SEN.

Yes -- but on some occasions gate staff don't make it obvious. I've often experienced the first boarding call (sometimes following pre-boarding) being for specified rows at the rear of the plane, followed by the next block going forward and ending up with the foremost Y seats -- in other words, no explicit call at all for C or status passengers.

I'll remember this helpful tip next time I get flagged down on the Autobahn.

I'm not convinced that this approach would do much to resolve any conflict situation between adults.

That's the way to do it!

Seriously, I suspect that most people who have flown LH more than a dozen times have had at least one unsatisfactory or even unpleasant customer service experience. I don't think there are very many "bad apples", but just a few in customer facing roles can make quite an impact. LH needs to work on that.

That said, are they really worse than other carriers? I thought so for a while, after a run of poor experiences. But then I remembered that probably 80% of my more positive flying-related experiences had involved LH, too.