Hi Jens,

Thanks for taking part in this community and for answering our questions. I booked two A class (First) tickets from AMS to JNB via ZRH during the last companion sale. My outbound flight was cancelled a few days ago. I called this afternoon to try to change my travel dates. I understand that it's difficult to refund consumers right now. I talked to an agent at Swiss, and she looked up dates for me, and told me that I needed to pay the fare difference (in my case, around 2000 euros). She told me the policy was that in order to change without fare difference, the new dates had to be 7 days before or 7 days after the cancelled date. I told her that the LH group is flying zero flights to South Africa during this 14 day period, so in my case, it's impossible to use this policy. It's frustrating, because I have seen on this forum, and on the "German Flyertalk", that some customers have been allowed to change their tickets without fare difference.

I'm scratching my head right now, and feel really stupid. I booked first class tickets that can't be used as first class tickets. I can either spend thousands of euros to change the dates, or I can change my flight to business class, and give up the left over value of my tickets. Either way I'm losing.

May I suggest that if the LH group isn't willing to allow us to change without fare difference, that they offer us instead of vouchers, "gift cards"? If I could use the whole value of my tickets at my convenience, I would be happy enough with that option during these uncertain times.

I purchase a ticket from LH but unfortunately had to cancel it due to the travel restrictions due to COVID-19.
It was canceled on March 6 and I received email notification of the cancellation from LH on that day.
However, I still have not seen reimbursement for the ticket purchase from LH to the credit card account
which I used for buying the ticket from LH. I did cancel it, I mean, not travel credit with LH
A month has passed already, it is quite late, for example, compared to the cases with UA,
which took less than two weeks to receive the reimbursement .

Hi hugolover,

we have forwarded your request to the specific department and will come back to you once we have an update for you.

Kind regards,

Markus

Hello ichigen,

as my colleagues are currently handling an unusual high amount of requests, needing to be initiated manually, your patience is highly appreciated. We are currently unable to provide you with a specific time frame, unfortunately.

Kind regards,

Markus

Thanks for replying itself, but very disappointing; no useful information at all.
I still don't see the refund transaction on my credit card account.

ichigen I've been waiting four weeks now (when I cancelled three lots of flights) as well. It's very frustrating.

My cancellation was triggered on March 18th. Still waiting for the actual refund to be paid out.

Ditto, but for March 11th...

I can understand and am sympathetic to delays if manual processing is involved due to an unexpected flight cancellation on a non-refundable fares. However, Lufthansa isn't refunding passengers on refundable fares either (8 weeks and waiting), which is a serious breach of trust. The whole point of paying more for a refundable fare is flexibility and clear expectations around cash refunds!

I'm only one individual passenger out of the millions Lufthansa serves, and as much as I support a return to more normal times for the airline industry and all of its employees, I will say that the Lufthansa brand has lost a lot credibility with me for the future. I wish you good luck.

Hi Markus,

15 days since your post and this matter needs to be clarified expediently.

Many thanks.

Hi hugolover,

there are many factors that needs to be observed.

I recommend to give my colleagues in the Service Center a call - they are able to have a look at your booking and will offer you the best available option.

Best regards,
Jonathan

Hi Markus,

I have booked 2 award tickets for MUC-DEL ( Travel date in June 2020) , in month of Jan from miles n more website . These tickets were Business Flex( 56000 miles + 129 euro per ticket) . It was for flight on Lot Polish.
Now I need to cancel both these tickets. Please advise
1) how to proceed : I do not seen online cancellation option.
2) After how many days of cancellation confirmation , I shall get Miles in my account
3) After how many days of cancellation , I shall get taxes /surcharge etc paid by me into my Credit card account.
4) Do you advise me to wait till Airline cancel this flight - in this scenario I shall save penalty of 50 euro per ticket , but there is risk - My refund of miles & Cash shall be delayed too much .... may get trapped in rare risk of Lufthansa... going into bankruptcy .

Please advise.
Many Thanks

Considering just 129€ (plus 50€) are at risk - the miles would be near-worthless in case of LH gone, I'd just wait. high chance the flight will be cancelled in a few weeks time. I doubt very much that the flight will happen.

IF LH Group goes belly up, then even a today-refunded ticket might not be paid out and become later part of the bankruptcy assets.

In any way, sit tight and wait.

Hi raji,

flights that have not been cancelled by the airline will need to be refunded in accordance to the fare conditions. If those allow for a cancellation against fee/ free of charge, I'd suggest to call the Service Center to have our colleagues there initiate the refund. There is no online option to proceed with the cancellation. Kindly mind, that all refund requests, for regular tickets just as award tickets, are currently handled with a heavy delay due to an extraordinarily high amount of inquiries. Hence, at this point, we cannot give more specific information on when to expect to have miles and taxes/ surcharge returned.

Best wishes, Katharina

Thank you , I think it seems to be better option - to wait till Lufthansa cancel this flight.