ISTFlyer

The strategy behind this is that they wait until 15-16 days before departure to cancel those flights, both in order not for everyone to call the hotline at the same time and to delay the refund of canceled flights.

oliver2002

The LH Group transports ~10 million passengers each month. You can't just push a button and cancel two weeks in the schedule in one go, the algorithms would go nuts trying to rebook everyone and the subsequent queueing of reservations to the various issung offices will overload everyone. The system was never designed to cancel 95% of the schedule for week after week...

hugolover

It will be nowhere near 10m for April and all the other months it’s going closer and closer to 0 given how much we now know about advance purchases.

They completely shut down OS and SN in the system.

cas_de

COVID & Award bookings:

Are award bookings handled the same way revenue bookings are treated these days (rebooking etc.) or is canceling the award and make a new award booking once things clear up the only way forward?

We have a 4 pax award itin Germany to Canada in late May that got one segment axed, because AC has suspended the route temporarily. Let's leave the whole travel restrictions and quarantine requirements aside for the moment. The orginal tickets were booked in July last year so the max validity of the ticket would be July this year. We will need to postpone the trip until next year anyways.

Raul_R

By my previous experience (from approx 2 years ago), award bookings were handled differently and they just return miles and taxes.
But it may be different now.

djjaguar64

Oliver I get all of that, as a small consumer all I care about is will I get my money back, I am not concerned about their zeroing out all classes, just tell me as a customer yes your flight is cancelled as I as a consumer have to deal with multiple other airlines to re-jig my bookings.

robertr

Further to the above should Lufthansa not be operational in September and if my Travel Agent is no longer in business can I deal directly with Lufthansa to discuss my options.
My concern is that Luthansa will not deal with me directly and I will not have my Travel Agent be able to renegotiate my booking.

Marsalforn

I did this. They have accepted a refund. And told me it will take several months....

Dave_C

So give them 7 days as required under EU law, then do a chargeback on your credit card.

hugolover

Money from two AmEx chargebacks landed in my account last Thursday. MXP tickets which had been cancelled in early-March.

Dave Sen

I have a Vacation booking at the 15th of May to Houston from Dusseldorf via Frankfurt. I think it is best to postpone my trip to the first week of September or next year April/May.

So I called Lufthansa and asked if they could re-book to 5th of September and they said the could do that and i get a 75 euro voucher and only had to pay 200 euro per ticket extra after the voucher. Now he says that if I don't want to pay extra I need to wait when the flight gets cancelled then I can get a full refund or a re-booking free of charge.

So my questions that he could not answer is when are the flights getting cancelled (1 week before, 1 day before..)?
And what does the rebooking free of charge mean. Only that exact same trip on the same days so Friday to Thursday or can I change does days. I now have a part via the u train can i edit that part? (It was the same price for u train and short flight but i thought i preferred train but parking at airport is cheaper then at trainstation and the Luggage situation is not ideal)

8420PR

When you make a chargeback the money is actually credited to your account immediately. There then starts a 60 day process where AMEX will request the merchant to either provide evidence to dispute the chargeback (which if AMEX accept as reasonable then the credit to your account will be reversed) or to accept the chargeback (the credit to your account stays and you never hear anything).

Personally I don't expect Lufthansa to dispute the chargebacks (essentially there is no valid reason unless the flights were not actually cancelled).

supine

Given they are processing your refund they certainly do have grounds to dispute the chargeback.

There is also the non-refundable penalty charged to the merchant when you do a chargeback. Hitting the airline with more of these seems counterproductive in the current situation.

Whether they have the time or desire to dispute the chargeback given the cirumstances is a whole other question...

oliver2002

The flights usually get cancelled about 14-15 days in advance. Once any segment of your trip is cancelled you can ask Lufthansa to rebook you (free of charge) onto any other day in the next 330 days or one year from date your ticket was issued. Or ask for the entire trip to be refunded without penalty.

mmff

They certainly don't. The timeline to process the refunds is 7 days according to European law. After that number of days has elapsed, the chargeback is hardly disputable, especially if they admitted themselves that a refund was in order.

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