Abducted Alien

How about rebooking if any when flying an awards flight to Asia in I (business). Am I being pumped to whY in different carrier?

bhrubin

Geez, protected myself with UA-LH flights to Paris because of the AF pilots strike, and now LH pilots may strike. Talk about bad timing and no luck. Here's hoping Oct. 3 comes with an end to the AF strike so I don't need the LH flights.

superpointsLXflyer

Just called the Swiss SEN hotline. They didn't know about failed negotiations ("where did you read that?") but called LH to find out more. LH's answer was that Cockpit would anounce a strike at least one day ahead. So flights tomorrow should be safe and I hope me and my +1 get to South America without problems...

kamel123

Well, it's headline news on the pilots' union website (www.vcockpit.de) + it's on several German news websites (e.g., www.spiegel.de).

The relevant quotes are: "Verhandlungen zur Übergangsversorgung zwischen Vereinigung Cockpit und Lufthansa Management erneut gescheitert ... Ab sofort ist deshalb mit weiteren Arbeitskampfmaßnahmen zu rechnen. Diese werden jeweils vorher der Öffentlichkeit bekannt gegeben."

LH management is not even able to pass that news to their own call centers?

And yes, the pattern in the past was that strikes would be announced one day in advance, but that is quite short especially for long haul destinations with limited capacity when everyone is trying to get rebooked at the same time.

JCary

Same here!

RTW1

There is no news to be passed to the call centers. This is just your average union posturing.
Unless a strike is announced there is no need to have flights rebooked by call center agents. And no need for any customer to call either.

And remember, the last planned strike day LH was able to reschedule nearly all long hauls.

ysolde

Great. We have a flight (JFK-FRA) on Tuesday night (September 30). Not thrilled at this news.

kamel123

Yes of course this is union posturing. However, given the past track record, I would believe it is extremely likely that we will see another strike, although no date has been announced yet.

Of course, LH does not want anyone to rebook. Fair enough. But it just makes them look stupid when negotiations have apparently broken down and they are ignorant about it/deny it.

And regarding the need for customers to call: It's anyone's own decision if they want to take the risk of their travel being disrupted. I wouldn't.

Wickersley

@:-)

Head over to MXP...

MXP > JFK on LH's least favoured ME carrier...

YuropFlyer

Good choice, and fantastic lounge in the mini hub there (with direct boarding ^ )

Compared to the "hole in the wall" that LH provides, it really shows

TRAVELSIG

Indeed when heading to New York this is an option.

Even the New York Post is writing about this very flight this week and they seem to note it is very busy in business and first (also the fares are not that low ranging from $5000 to $7000):
http://nypost.com/2014/09/23/emirate...vita-in-milan/

Back on the main topic- Wall Street Journal is noting the strike could indeed cause significant misery if timed together with the AF strike:

http://online.wsj.com/articles/pilot...kes-1411644712

Flying FRA/VCE yesterday coming in off the USA wave of flights- there were a great number of passengers re-accomodated over to Lufthansa from AF due to their also very long ongoing strike. In fact- for the first time in a very long time Lufthansa was announcing compensation offers over the PA loudspeaker system for anyone who would take a later flight to VCE via VIE (although at 200 EUR for a five hour delay and a connection through Vienna I am not sure just how many takers they got for this offer- we certainly left with every seat full obviously).

What I find most concerning about this ongoing strike is information such as this:

"Cockpit regrets that negotiations have failed once again," the union said in a statement, accusing management of not wanting to reach an agreement.

"Further labour action can be expected with immediate effect. The public will be warned in advance," the statement said.

A spokesman for Lufthansa insisted that the airline had "signalled its willingness to compromise" and offered to talk about the contentious points.

No new date had been set for further negotiations, however.

"We appeal to the union not to go ahead with more labour action and to return to the negotiating table," the spokesman said.

Following three separate days of walkouts in recent weeks, Lufthansa pilots agreed to postpone a fourth warning strike last week after receiving a new proposal from management.

http://www.thelocal.de/20140925/pilo...ter-talks-fail

Surely- cannot by this point someone from Lufthansa social media post a comment somewhere about what as a customer my possible risks are?

If not here on Flyertalk- at least on Facebook or Twitter? Instead there are pictures of "our world is truly stunning" with a nice sunset!!!! This is really the part of the problem that as a customer is most difficult to accept- changing market realities, negotiations with labour- there are many dynamics.

How come though it is not possible to keep the customer up to date in 2014 via a social media channel instead of posting pretty sunset pictures??? We used to have on Flyertalk an excellent Lufthansa lurker who gave us advance strike information and helped us to plan our travel- now we have nothing.

www.facebook.com/lufthansa

RTW1

So please tell me what other company thinks it is a sound idea to post something on social media regarding the negotiations about employee compensation?
It would be rather silly for a company to make announcements that there might be a strike but no date has been set. Useless information that will only lead to people reacting when there's nothing to react to.

They will make an announcement when the date has been set by the unions, like they have always done. And that, including what to do, will be posted to social media. And a new schedule will be posted as soon as is available.

Please stop behaving like an impatient 5 year old. Go stand in line for the new iPhone or something. But this is a business they are running, not a news site.

The information is available for anyone to find.... Your risks are the same as they were before, there might be a strike, there might not be. You might be affected when you are flying this week, you might not be (and you most likely wont be).
But I'm sure you know that already and don't need a Facebook message to confirm that knowledge.

TRAVELSIG

Actually a number of companies post about their labour disruptions using social media. They don't need to post about their negotiations- they can post- as they did for a very long time with the original Lufthansa lurker- via their twitter, Facebook, or even Flyertalk accounts.

The personal comments from you by the way are quite possibly a little off the Flyertalk TOS- perhaps you can modify them if your schedule permits.

mmff

While the possibilities are the same ("strike", "no strike") the odds and corresponding risk have definitely changed.

kamel123

Well, I think the risk has definitely gone up. The union has announced that there will be a strike, so unless they restart negotiations in the very short term (which is unlikely), this is going to happen.

And why is there nothing to react to? Of course it is not in LH's interest that customers proactively move their bookings to other carriers as they fear to be affected by a strike. Last time there were strikes on longhaul (this year in March), I had a return flight SFO-FRA on LH in F which was cancelled and I was rebooked into SK via CPH in C. So thank you very much for making me lose half a day, sit on an angled seat and endure the wonderful SK food. So yes, I made it back, not a major disaster. But this time, I would proactively rebook by myself before the strike announcement comes out, because then it's likely to be too late.

I understand they want to keep it quiet, but not even having a small notice on the website while it's all over the news is frankly ridiculous.