cfischer

nope. There is married segment nonsense even for J. Ran into that last month.

danielflyer

Can I just book a bunch of refundable tickets, hope LH cancels <14 days in, and file EU261?

El_Duderito

Even Economy Light books into Y depending on the route/availability. I have some 800 Euro tickets where LH is seriously asking advance seat reservation fees from a Senator. Oh, and they offer 300 Euro Y->Business upgrades.

Playing the compensation game should work, but make sure that you are booking flexible tickets, not just Y class.

danielflyer

Looks like you would need to book Flexible J-- thanks. Curious what would happen if I file too many EU261 claims or cancel too many refundable fares.

bocastephen

What makes more sense is making sure you have enough staff to operate properly at pre-virus levels - everyone laid off or furloughed should have been called back a long time ago. It doesn't matter if it's LH, UA or DL or anyone else - the level of stifling incompetence shown by a global cabal of idiotic airline executives is almost incomprehensible, and it's time government steps in to hold these people accountable for their strategic blunders.

chris63

Exactly & they took tax payers cash to stay afloat, now they are shafting those same taxpayers, it was a no lose situation for LH group, only people who suffer are the pax & the employees they got rid of

chris63

LH usually play hardball with all EU261 claims unless you are SEN or HON & they realise it’s not going to work out for them

hugolover

Quite interesting but not new, KL did it for a bit?

If you’re premium then you’re embarrassed to have anything but full fare RBD’s on your boarding pass so nothing changes

If you know your place then you should have a carnet of tickets, there’s been many opportunities to buy. This doesn’t affect you.

It’s a fascinating test that a rev man would love, a whole month of seeing if people will pay full fare for your crap product, LH’s monopoly position has let them milk the DACH market for decades, entirely approved by those governments and the EC. Now you get to milk them even more .

On the climate side of things I’ve wondered how the market would respond if flying became very expensive so people could only afford to fly less. Less capacity, fewer flights, higher revenue per seat and lower deadly carbon emissions.

iLied

I don’t remember KL doing this. I’ve seen LO do this for flights to UA.

KL did order planes to return to AMS empty in order to clear the backlog.

bakrgby

Why would LH do this?

BristolTraveller

Unfortunately it's hard for us to see the impact of this, as July's flights were already on sale for a long time at the usual array of fares. All they've done is more-or-less frozen the July market pretty much in July. (anyone trying to rebook an economy fare to a different flight is in for a heck of a fare-difference shock).

A true test would be to put *next* July's flights on sale only in C/Y and leave them there and see what that looks like. Oddly, I wonder if load factors would plummet but the number of flights would stay static and profitability roughly level. Pricing the true cost of carbon into Jet-A seems to be only the assured way to cut flights/emissions.

cpworld

With the SAS strike starting and a few others imminent, maybe they are counting on those carriers to pay them more to rebook passengers?

bocastephen

Sounds like a great plan! I guess we can use flightaware to search for the most frequently canceled flights.

shipsmail

Expertflyer is showing C, Z and even P for some US destinations now!

adambrau

It's the result of overbooked summer flights. Airlines sold too many seats. Airports and airlines don't have enough staff to make it work. This is a smart decision. After a greedy one!