LH cancels my booking - without letting me know (solved EU261 received)
 

Hi All

I regard myself as a, well at least fairly, frequent traveller but I had the following overly frustrating experience today:

- booked a flight LHR-MUC mid May
- thought I go slightly wild and paid for a cash upgrade after booking into J from Eco light
- end of May might flights got cancelled due to a schedule change, called up the call center and got rebooked. Agent mentioned to me that he was able to rebook me directly into the same booking class, so Business (Z)
- a few days later I received an email from LH to call the call center urgently, comes out agent made a mistake and they cannot book me automatically into Business, so they re-issued the ticket under the original fare, hence Eco light. Cash upgrade got refunded (they actually did after a week) and this time I thought ok I'll stay in Eco given the light load factors.

So far so good. Received various emails about inflight offerings, check manage my bookings, was asked to submit offerings for potential upgrades, etc. Emails came in until yesterday.

Flight to leave tomorrow. Tried to check in today, got message 'booking not found'. Got concerned and called the UK call center. Reached agent, he put me on music and hung up after 10min of checking whats going on. Reached the German call center - was told that my ticket was requested to be refunded 4th June (which was around the time of the rebooking).

Asked what LH can do, answer nothing as ticket was already refunded. No offer to reinstate booking, flight price today for a return this week 600 GBP vs the 134 of my original ticket.

Positive note - the cash arrived today on my credit card, but still frustrating as I was planning to see my family for the first time after lock down. Definitely no cancellation from my side. Booking was shown as existing in MMB yesterday.

Did anything like this happen to anyone of you and what's the best way to complain? Unfortunately I don't have any status with LH, I normally fly BA but unfortunately they don't serve MUC this month.

And sorry for the lengthy post :)

Best, D

The conversations with the service agents are normally recorded, so you could ask them to check those.
However, giving the short timing, this won't bring your flight back.
Do you have a confirmation that the ticket was re-issued (i.e. new e-ticket) ? Then you can claim EU passenger rights for penalty of cancelling flight without informing you.

Where do you find such rights? EU Reg. 261/04 does not apply to tickets allegedly cancelled by pax (or someone else). It is neither a cancellation of the flight nor a denied boarding (the latter requires a valid ticket)

That's why i asked whether he has a re-issued ticket. In that case, I guess LH would need to prove that he cancelled it, otherwise EU rights kick in.

Actually this a classic "denied boarding" compensation claim. OP called LH for a ticket change, LH said it would do it and as far as the OP is concerned, that should be it, so long as the call recording aligns with this.

The ticket issuing malarkey is immaterial, as you can't expect a regular consumer to know about internal airline processes, and neither should it be a passenger concern if a ticket had been reissued or not.

I beg to differ. This is nowhere near a "denied boarding" situation. You have no case law/ECJ rulings supporting your interpretation.

If it is not denied boarding, then what is it? Airline can just decide to "not reissue properly" a ticket and null and void any commitments to the customer?
I would find it extremely surprising if a court ruled that a passenger who was prevented from checking in is not denied boarding.

Going by the wording of EC261/2004:

and referenced:
In conclusion

• Passenger has presented themselves for check-in, via electronic means
• therefore passenger has presented themselves for boarding under the conditions laid down
• ergo passenger has been denied boarding

You might argue that the passenger was not holding a ticket; however,

• the passenger has not cancelled a ticket themselves
• the airline has not cancelled the passengers flight - not the one he has been booked to
• passenger can show he has been informed by the airline that he holds a valid ticket.

Airline cannot retroactively decide to cancel a passengers ticket because their own employee made a mistake.

This equates to a denied boarding situation, which triggers EC261/2004.
The burden of proof that the passenger wanted to cancel/refund the ticket lies with the operating carrier.

I cannot agree with you. Airlines would be able to deny all denied boarding claims, because the airline elected to cancel the ticket by themselves. This would contravene the entire EU passenger rights legislation.

This is denied boarding, clear and simple. Incompetence of the airline is no extraordinary circumstance for EU261.

EDIT: Withholding EU261 on the grounds that the passenger had no valid ticket doesn't stand up here since a) the passenger did not cancel the booking and b) the Airline initiated a rebooking/rerouting with agreement of the passenger. It's simply a mistake made by the airline, which can well happen, but must be compensated by law.

I have raised EU261 claim - will report back once LH comes back me.

Thanks for all your opinions!

Lufthansa initially deny all EU261 claims anyway, so I am sure that will happen here too. You will probably require a lawyer for this one.

They can compensate me and call it then voluntary compensation out of goodwill if it makes them feel better :)

Jokes aside, if they like to make that more difficult than it needs to be, then so be it....

Who does LH say requested the refund?

I have asked the same question and they could not answer this..... the only information I got was that the ticket was refunded June 4th.

Ask for a receipt showing the original form of payment.