LOT Polish Denied Boarding in PEK
 

I'm hoping someone can give me guidance regarding my situation. I booked a business class flight flying from PEK-WAW-FRA-JFK. PEK-WAW-FRA is on LOT Polish and FRA-JFK is on Singapore Airlines. This is all on one ticket. I booked this by transferring credit card points (87k) to Aeroplan. When I got to PEK, I was denied boarding since the agent said the way I booked the flight was flagged as fraudulent. They asked me where I got my miles to book this flight and I explained it was through credit card points transfer and the agent said there is no such thing which I tried to refute but they refused to listen. I then called the LOT Polish customer service and explained my situation. The representative on the phone agrees with me that my booking is valid and even offered to talk to the LOT Polish agents at PEK to explain the situation. I passed my phone to them and again, it was pretty obvious that they just refused to accept this as a valid booking. The representative then said she will call the manager of the LOT Polish office at PEK. Ultimately, she was not successful in persuading the manager and I was denied boarding.

I had to get back to NY soon, and LOT Polish did not offer me any alternative way to get me to my final destination. The next flight flying on LOT Polish to NYC was two days later and the price is nearly $5k for an economy flight. So I then just ended up booking Korean Air flying from PEK-ICN-JFK for around $5k on business.

Questions I have:
1. What are my chances in getting my 87k points back since I was denied boarding through no fault of my own and even LOT Polish customer service agreed that it was a valid booking and it was only the LOT Polish agents at PEK that said it was invalid.
2. Any ways I can get at least a portion of the $5k flight I booked on Korean Air reimbursed?

Any help or guidance is greatly appreciated. Thanks all in advance.



https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...3917f77d5c.png

Have you asked Aeroplan?
Have you a history of flights/awards with Aeroplan?

I'm on hold to speak to them. So nothing yet. Just want to see if anyone else have a good strategy in the meantime.

I think that it would have been wise to try to reach Aeroplan/Air Canada while you were at PEK, but hindsight is always 20:20.

Since this was a single award ticket for travel to the United States, I would file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Transportation against Air Canada (which I assume was the issuing airline). While the DOT cannot order an airline to compensate you, it can bring an enforcement proceeding against an airline if DOT perceives that the airline is not acting appropriately if they've violated DOT consumer-protection rules. DOT complaint information here:

https://www.transportation.gov/airco...umer-complaint

If neither Aeroplan nor a U.S. DOT complaint gets you satisfaction, you might ask a lawyer you know or the Legal Aid Society
https://legalaidnyc.org/get-help/con...-claims-court/

about the feasibility of suing Air Canada, LOT, or maybe both of them for money damages in Queens County Small Claims Court (Air Canada and LOT both do business in Queens County; AC at LGA, and LO at JFK).

Yet another option is to contact Christopher Elliott at
elliott.org

to see if he can help. His organization advocates for travelers who have had travel-related problems. (This might be easier than engaging in litigation.)

Best of luck!

EU261 compensation for involuntary denied boarding on a EU carrier, travelling to EU member state on first segment, surely ?

LOT may allege that it not denied boarding as in the eyes of LOT the OP had no valid ticket.

To the OP: you do realise that for this itinerary you need Schengen visa?

I believe this is very relevant questions. If there is no history with Aeroplan except for a transfer from credit card and business class redemption, it most likely have triggered the red flag.

The OP def. needs to contact Aeroplan.

The whole itinerary as ticketed is third country to third country and therefore not subject to EC261/2004 regulation. Unfortunately this has been litigated relatively recently for KIV-VIE-BKK and it was ruled to be out of scope. Case C-451/20. Annoyingly, the ruling is not published in English.

This is very useful information, I've always suspected it to be the case.

People on here will be way more qualified than me to inform you but in slightly close situations. I hope you took timings, who you spoke to, who denied you?, what time you called, who was the supervisor they couldnt reach, what your expenses were for the following days, who did you reach at LOT that agreed with you. Its not a non exhaustive list but will give you a leg up.

Case C-451/20
 

Thank you. This is indeed very interesting EC judgment (but apparently not published in English but all kinds of other European languages).

The interesting part is the conclusion: "this Regulation does not apply to flights which has been booked together and which consists of two legs to be operated by a Community carrier when both the airport of departure for the first leg and the airport of arrival for the second leg are located in a third country, while only the airport where the transfer takes place is located in the territory of a Member State".

The other part/question was in fact also interesting. OS rebooked the pax to TK on a flight scheduled to arrive 40min after the originally booked OS flight to BKK, however, the TK flight was delayed by 1h47 min which meant that the actual arrival time in BKK exceeded the original arrival time by more than 2 hours. Airhelp claimed that this made the pax entitled to 300 EUR for cancellation of the OS flight. OS denied this stating that TK was scheduled to arrive at BKK within 40min of original arrival time and OS was not liable for any delay of the TK flight (not a stupid argument IMO). This Q was not dealt with as the EC court found that the EC regulation was not applicable at all.

I agree and think a small claims lawsuit would be the fastest way to resolve this. Just sue all parties involved and let them figure it out.

A small claims court action in Beijjng against
LOT could also be an option.

Unless the OP is Chinese and knows how to navigate the Chinese court system, this is not advisable. The risk of non-transparent process and decision is far too high.

Both would definitely need to apply. And I’m willing to bet LOT would pay up rather quickly in this situation as the court would likely side with a Chinese national. The amount in dispute is small enough that LOT would probably not fight.

But I agree NYC is probably the better venue.

Maybe at that time, OP cannot connect Aeroplan, since Aeroplan is not 24/7, plus even during their working hours it is extremely hard to be connected (take hours of waiting)

I suspect LO did not leave any note in system so AC probably sees you as "no show". Then AC is unlikely to help you proactively.

Do you believe this Manager is Polish?

Did the call centre and the Manager communicate in Polish?

I don't that's a relevant case here since in this case this was very specifically a 2 leg trip, starting outside EU++ and ending outside EU++ but connecting in VIE so EU. The main part of the ruling referred to it being only artificially in scope by dint of the transfer point and segmenting up the trip. Whereas this trip has a sector fully within the EU, namely WAW to FRA, and in my view that must be in scope. Since the Advocate-General disagreed with the courts assessment I suspect that in the unlikely event this case came to court there could be a different view on scope for this case. Moreover there are specifics about cancellation compensation which are different to IDB (in terms of the timing).

Hi guv1976 (and everyone who responded). Thank you all. I have been quite busy with the trip and work since returning. Just got a chance to go through the responses now (appreciate the patience). First, just want to reply to the comment. My first instinct is to go to an Air Canada desk but they don't have any (confirmed by the airport staff).

As a first update, I called Air Canada and successfully got my miles back (currently waiting for the refund of the taxes and fees).

As next step, I am intending to file a complaint with the EU and US DOT as well as filing a legal complaint if I do not receive a satisfactory response and reimbursement from LOT Polish. Maybe the EU and US DOT complaint won't go anywhere but it has to be put on record for everyone to see and could be useful if I do pursue damages though the courts. I'll provide updates.

Hi chris63. Thanks for your response. I do intend to pursue this option, including filing additional complaints with the US DOT. If anything, I wanted to be on record.

I would argue that LOT Polish (in Poland) and Air Canada issued tickets and they have no problem with my itinerary. It is the LOT Polish ground crew in Beijing that would not let me board, almost in defiance of LOT Polish in Poland.

I'm an American, don't need visa to travel to the EU.

Hi SK AAR. Honestly, what they told me might have been made up by the ground crew there. Not saying they are lying but I just don't know what the truth is. I did contact Aeroplan and they refunded me the miles (credit card refund pending but it is expected to be posted to my credit card within a few days).

Thanks Fabo.sk. Not disagreeing with you there. I would still like to file a formal complaint and have this on record even if it doesn't result in any monetary compensation. Other people and litigators can use the report for future references once it's made public.

Were you assigned 3C on LO92?

I guess you don't have a base in Europe. If so then your two lines of complaint would be to LOT, as the Flight Operator, under EC261 - I'd be surprised if they are helpful, but it's the IDB side you need to focus on. But DOT in the USA may well be more forthcoming, though obviously they are not going to implement EC261 for you. They do have their own guidelines for IDB and LOT doesn't have a lot of choice if DOT takes the matter up with the airline.

May I kindly ask why you think I was assigned 3C? Have you heard something? Please do tell.

From a formal point of view if the ticket was marked as fraud, the case was not a IDB. It is highly doubtful that LOT marked the ticket as a fraud, it is almost certain that Aeroplan did it.

I doubt it. Aeroplan was fine with the ticket. No issues from them even when I called them after the fact. It was likely local LOT Polish staff who made the determination. I take their reason with skepticism. I'm just making public what they told me. I don't know if that's the true reason or if there's something sinister behind all of this.

Could the flight have been oversold ?

What information do you suppose LOT staff might have had access to in order to make such a determination?

I don't even know what "marked as fraud" could mean. If Aeroplan thought it was fraud they would have canceled the ticket. I don't think there's any "mark" they could put on a reservation or ticket that another airline would see.

I think what happened is the LOT agents didn't understand how to validate the ticket. I had a problem once on Turkish on a UA issued award ticket where the checkin agent just couldn't figure out what to do. He had to call over a supervisor who was able to fix it in a few keystrokes and then he checked me in no problem. I've also had UA be unable to check me in on an AC issued (revenue) ticket because something was disconnected between the ticket and the reservation. Luckily I was at an airport with AC staff but they had to call their help desk to revalidate the ticket.

Something similar was wrong with your reservation -- probably something more like the Turkish case where they should have been able to fix it but they just didn't know how so they made up some story to explain the problem.

Based on what I was told and over heard of others who were also denied boarding, it was only award redemptions that was singled out. The local crew just don’t accept award redemptions. The way it seemed to me is that this is solely decided by the local crew and not LOT Polish, the company. Nonetheless, the local crew represents LOT Polish and ultimately LOT Polish should be held responsible for their agents actions.

Thanks for telling your experience. Based on what you described, it seems that there was an innocent confusion and the local agent tried to help. Happy to hear your situation was resolved timely. This is not the case for me. The local crew not only won’t help, they claim my ticket is purchased fraudulently and their tone was unprofessional to say the best. The reason they gave me makes no sense. After posting this, I was contacted by others who had the same experience. All reward redemptions. Seems like this is a systemic issue created by the local crew. I wasn’t singled out but the experience was painful nonetheless.

People PM’d you to say they had issues with Aeroplan issued LO ex-PEK?

Is that with origin only PEK or also those flying a return/ further segments?

I received messages from people. I don’t know if they all booked through Areoplan but they experienced the same issue at PEK. No one at PEK hinted it was Aeroplan redemptions but award redemptions in general.

on a related note, you asked about 3C on OS92. Can you share some details? Did you hear something about 3C? Kind enough to share?

Thank you very much! This is very helpful!

sorry for the whole drama, ny.
this is ridiculous...local crew in PEK refused a lot (all?) award redemption tickets to board....

Same thing happened to my mom two weeks ago. I booked her an award ticket on a LOT Polish business class flight from PEK to WAW then connecting WAW to ORD. I booked using Avianca LifeMiles. She was denied a boarding pass at the airport by airport check-in staff. It was apparently the "Beijing office" that would not honor the ticket. I called both LOT Polish and Avianca customer service and both said the tickets looked normal on their end. I am completely baffled how this could happen. Is some local manager going rogue and unilaterally deciding not to honor award tickets? There were apparently 4 other people who were also denied boarding on the same flight. I had to book my mom a same-day ticket on United for ~$2k - not happy about it at all. Avianca is refusing to give me the miles back without a $200 reinstatement fee. I'm frustrated and angry and don't know what recourse I have.

Hi! I'm in the exact same situation. I booked a ticket for PEK - WAW - JFK with Lifemiles for my mom departing tomorrow, but received an email yesterday from a LOT representative in their Beijing office saying she would be denied boarding. Did you email Lifemiles or just give them a call? I tried to explain the entire thing to the agent in Lifemiles but they didn't understand why this could happen, and LOT side said they would only talk to Avianca, not me. Already had a plan B but feeling so frastruated trying to reach both sides and get an answer.