eefor jfp

Posting this here since it involves FRA. My son was on UA 960 (Newark-Frankfurt) with an onward connection to Split, Croatia which arrived five hours late today. He tried the business lounge in Z/A (he has Frequent Traveller status) but was told that they couldn't help him and to get in line with approximately 200 other passengers to talk to UA. Is there another option anywhere airside or landside that would be faster than the UA connections desk? Thanks for any help anyone can offer. By the way, is duty of care (i.e a hotel and food) in this situation totally up to UA's good will? or is it covered under EU261?

SK AAR

Your son should talk to UA ground staff who has more leeway to rebook than call center agent (no experience with UA CS though). Maybe it is better to try UA staff at check-in counters landside?

EU Reg. 261/04 is not applicable for UA flight to Europe, so any hotel expenses need to be covered under a UA policy (which I have no knowledge about). Travel insurance should cover such expenses I believe.

kai.lileboo

If UA arrived late, LH has nothing to do, nor would it care. Can you imagine how many airlines arrive daily at FRA delayed and where would we be if LH had to deal with all these irregularities.
As OP advised, he has to contact UA in FRA and nobody else. And in these cases there is a long queue, as many have the same issue at the same time.

eefor jfp

What's the point of being together in Star Alliance if LH won't help field UA problems at their main hub? UA can't have more than a handful of staff there and LH has dozens. Seems a bit weird. Anyway, after three hours in line I was able to call UA and get things sorted out by phone for tomorrow and then find a hotel which UA said they will reimburse.

oliver2002

United (and any airline that causes the delay for that matter) is the only one who is supposed to fix the ticket. LH agents are not allowed to touch the ticket.

athome

Same is valid in the US, when a LH flight arrives late. UA doesn't care.

eefor jfp

How can UA not care when there's a 98% chance that the missed connection will be on UA? The whole point of the alliance is seamless connections. At least that's what the marketing promises. How can UA issue me a boarding pass on LH and check luggage though to an LH flight and I can use an LH lounge but if something goes wrong, LH has no responsibility? I'll admit I'm used to oneworld; my irrops there have been handled pretty well compared to this cluster. UA has chosen to de-emphasize their presence in Frankfurt because it's LH's hub. I guess that's UA's mistake if LH isn't going to handle things.\ Again, if LH only has a few staff in FRA, how can they handle rebooking for hundreds of people? Maybe it's they way it is but if it is this way, they need to fix things and cooperate better.

Fabo.sk

UA can very well contract with LH to act as their agent in FRA. I don't know if they do or don't. They don't have to though.

Raul_R

You definetly misunderstood the purpose of Alliance on this matter.
Through checking the luggage -- yes. Use the lounges -- also almost yes. But fixing other members mess -- no.
It ws always, that ONLY the airline caused mess is responsible to fix it.
About duty of care -- also it is repsonsibility of airline caused a mess.
I think that for now the issue is fixed already but for the future -- UA have very good videochat help system for such issues. And agents there have pretty good level of rights and as I find several months ago, much more rights (or much higher competence) than agenst in the airport.

flyingfkb

Before going landside he should check if the LH transfer desk is also handling United. Normally the transfer desk shows which airlines they handle. There is a chance that UA contracted the service to LH.

Again LH in general is not responsible for customer support of UA customers unless they are contracted to do so. It is the same the other way around. You son has a ticket from UA.

AlicorporateUK

The Sky Team folks will no doubt share their expertise on this but, back in my "Sky Team Days", I was able to get assistance by AF/KL/DL/AZ agents regardless of the operating carrier (okay, AZ agents used to be terribly unhelpful with their typical IDGAF attitude but normally had good experiences with AF/KL/DL). Also and I know that someone mentioned the re-booking option now being available on the Lufthansa's new (or beta) app but again, I remember when flying AF/KL/DL, their respective apps always being very effective towards that purpose (especially KL's, which would be showing an automatic re-booking option that could then be modified in just a few clicks), same with DL a few years back further to a diversion at SYR, not sure if this is still the case though. About time for LH's IT to step-up slightly...

G

oliver2002

AC, UA, A3, SQ, CA, TP etc all opted not to use LH Ground services as their agent, but have their own in MUC & FRA. The team is usually a set of supervisors who work for the airlines and then a few ground handling staff (sometimes in LH uniform, sometimes some other agency). When the ops work fine all is good. When things come apart this house of cards collapses. The two three agents are not enough to take care of irreg handling at the ticketing and transfer desks. The old adage 'you pay peanuts, you get monkeys' holds true.

OW has a similar system, all their members needs to be trained and have to be able to rebook/reissue each others tickets. This is not possible in *A because they have too many members who are in competition to each other. LH ground agents who handle SK tickets for example are heavily restricted on what they can see and what they can do. LH airport agents used to have a VM like terminal where they could look into UA's system but that went away sometime in 2014/15 when UA didn't want to pay for LH ground handling.

vkis

... and UA is dealing with a handful of cancellations, while LH and their staff have hundreds on their hands.

AlicorporateUK

Interesting, thanks (and good-to-know). Then again, even though I put Sky Team under a positive spotlight, I still had a number of issues and it certainly wasn't all that smooth, especially when it came to ticketing i.e. tickets booked through AZ or AF/KL and involving segments operated by either carriers (e.g., direct experience, MAN/BHX-FCO via CDG/AMS), struggle to check-in (055 tickets with flights operated by AF would require you to call AF in order to get their own PNR and proceed to on-line check-in, literally inefficiency at its best...), getting told "AZ has a different system and we can't see their segments" and all that, I've never experienced anything even remotely similar when travelling Star Alliance, possibly just a couple of times a few years back with LO issued tickets involving segments on OU (ZAG-SJJ), which used to cause minor issues at check-in or if anything went "wrong". Digressing. [/OT]

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eefor jfp

Thanks for the explanation. I still think that if they're sharing revenue, they should share responsibility but understand it's apparently down to what UA will or won't pay LH. Maybe AA and BA are just more willing to pay each other for these types of services in their main hubs. I'm pretty sure I've only dealt with AA in the US and BA in London for missed connections, though so far these have been few and far between despite 3-4 or more transatlantic trips per year.