A final update to my Lufthansa EU261/2004 delay claim.
If you missed out on the details of my issue with Lufthansa, I’ll briefly summarize:
- Itinerary: Milan – Frankfurt – Munich – Los Angeles
- Milan to Frankfurt flight delayed by two hours
- Frankfurt to Munich flight delay (due to crew scheduling) forces misconnection in Munich and returning home 24+ hours later
- EU261/2004 compensation requested due to Munich to Frankfurt delay and delayed arrival into Los Angeles
- Lufthansa rejects compensation on the basis that Milan to Frankfurt delay was not long enough and that subsequent delay did not matter
- Back-and-forth ensued with Lufthansa insisting that Frankfurt to Munich delay did not matter because it was not the “first delay” on the itinerary
- After sending a note to CEO Carsten Spohr’s office, we received 250EUR each without an admission of liability.
Click here and here for all the details.
> Read More: The Incredulous, Absurd Reason Lufthansa Is Denying Me EU261 Compensation
> Read More: Update On My Lufthansa EU261 Claim
After the last 250EUR deposit, I wrote back once more claiming that only a full payment of 600EUR each plus expenses would resolve the matter. I also filed a complaint with the Luftfahrt-Bundesamt, the German governmental agency that handles these sorts of complaints.
Two E-Mails Arrive
At long last, Lufthansa responded with a pair of notes. First, it agreed to pay the full 600EUR:
Dear Mr. Klint,
We are very sorry that your journey from Frankfurt to Los Angeles via Munich on 22 June did not proceed smoothly and we apologize for the caused inconvenience.
We have taken the opportunity to review your case and calculated the respective distance on the basis of the great circle route method and decided to proceed to the payment of a total of 600 EUR.
An additional payment in the amount of 812 USD (equal 700 EUR / 350 EUR per Person) has today been transferred into your bank account. Since the transaction is organized and processed by our accounting department please allow up to two weeks for the payment to clear. Thank you in advance for your patience in this respect.
We hope that our solution meets your expectations and we would be pleased to
welcome you as well as [your colleague] on board a Lufthansa flight again in the near future.
Before I could even respond with a follow-up about the expenses, this arrived as well:
Dear Mr. Klint,
We are very sorry that your journey on 22 June did not proceed smoothly.
Of course, our passengers can expect to receive care amenities at the airport in such situations. We process today the payment of your hotel bill and your taxi costs for an amount of USD426,44. Your patience in this respect is appreciated as it may take some days for the payment to clear.
We do hope that despite your unfortunate experience, you will continue to travel with Lufthansa.
All money has now posted for both my business partner and me.
Don’t Give Up!
The key is persistence. Lufthansa, like other airlines on both sides of the pond, will try to wear you out through initial denials and spurious excuses. You know if your claim is legitimate or not. If it is, don’t give up. Keep hitting Lufthansa with emails: I started asking for daily updates. Maybe they paid just to get me off their backs. Does it matter? They delay was real and under EU regulation, the money was due.
CONCLUSION
There is something to be said for following the chain of command, but if I ever run into another Lufthansa delay, I’m not wasting my time going through normal protocols. While Lufthansa unnecessarily dragged its feet, I appreciate that in the end it paid up.
image: Lufthansa
I had an 8 Hour delay in Geneva to Athens with Swiss. They offered me 500 Dollars a month ago and was told the money would be transferred in 14 days but it never did. is this the right amount of compensation for the delay? does it take that long to receive the transfer?
You could try constantly emailing them and report to the other necessary authority.
Good for you, always nice to see David win in a ‘David vs Goliath’ situation. Also nice to see the process thoroughly documented and not hushed up by an NDA.
Aren’t you in another tricky situation with a Swiss first class ticket or something like that? What’s the update on that one?
LOL
You are probably banned from flying them now. Daily updates… really?! They probably just paid you to make you go away.
How’s that lawsuit with Swiss and Aeroplan going?
Hi Matthew,
We had a business class ticket from Prague to Bangalore via Viena and Delhi (Austrian and Air India on same ticket). Our Austrian flight was delayed from Prague, hence missing the Air India flight. We were rescheduled for next day, flying in Lufthansa via Frankfurt to Bangalore. The problem with this was that we missed our connection (Srilankan – different ticket) from Bangalore to Male, which meant we had to pay 710 to change the flight and lost a hotel night. We begged them to put us in a flight all the way to Male as we would lose our connection, but they refused as it was not their ticket. On top of this, our luggage did not arrive in Bangalore. So we were in the Maldives for 36 hours without change of clothes even, and it’s not a place where you can easily go shopping. So far, they have given us nothing. What do you think is fair compensation for this? Thanks,
What happened to the SWISS flight?
We are all still waiting for the much promised but yet delivered update to SWISS F with Aeroplan.
And I will give one as soon as I can.
This’ll be the last time I mention this until you post it, but let me just say one more thing: anytime you even remotely mention anything related to Swiss, Lufthansa, an issue you are having with any European star-alliance carrier, or Air Canada/Aeroplan, thats going to be what we are going to ask for in the comments. Like I said, I won’t do that again after this one, last time, but you’d better expect that from other readers until you give us an update.
Can you explain the math? Did they overpay or am I missing something…
Had a surprisingly smooth interaction with UA regarding the same matter. First my girlfriends flight out of Amsterdam was delayed do to mechanical issues. Called in, they told me where to send the claim and mentioned that it can take up to 30 days for the dept. to handle the claim. 20 days later they offered either €600 or a $900 transportation voucher. Then a couple weeks later my flight was delayed a out of Berlin by a couple hours and I emailed the dept. directly with my claim. Got the same responsive as my girlfriend within 24 hours (might’ve helped that I’m UA Gold). But to me it seems like US based airlines are easier to deal with EC261 than Europeans.
Lufhansa is absolutely horrible.
I had flown from US to Kiev 2 or 3 times on Lufthansa and I remember2 times having a late departure that required being rushed through in Frankfurt and then not having my luggage until the following day.
They afso had the same problem with my wife’s luggage when she flew.
I jokingly now say that Lufthansa means Lost Luggage.
I am also having an issue with them about what they charged for a change to a ticket and how they presented that information on their website.
I pushed my wife’s flight back by 1 week due to weather and fear that she would not get to the airport. Based on what I saw on their website, I believed there was a $3 credit but was shocked to discover a $1650 charge on my credit card. I could have bought that ssme ticket for just under $1,000 (I checked) and simply thrown the original in the trash and it would hsve been much cheaper.
To add insult to injury they then bumped my wife from that flight causing her a 24 hour delay.
No compensation was received so far and it had been a month already.
I am very seriously thinking about finding a class action attorney to nail them to the wall. I am sure they did this to a lot more people.
Hi Mark, my name is Anton Radchenko and I started AirAdvisor service to help people like you after my family and myself were denied boarding at FRA on flight to dubai. and we have been helping people from 2017. Feel free to submit a claim, we will make sure to squeeze Lufthansa.
Given that most readers (such as myself) are not lawyers and are not fluent in German, how would you advise them to proceed in a similar circumstance? I think that any practical suggestions would be very welcome.
Deny, deny, deny…in the hope ( almost expectation) that people will give up and go away. Probably pay out only a tiny fraction of claims from outside the EU . They should be pursued all the way to the door of the court.
…and who did they pay…..two people out of the hundreds or thousands ?? In the meantime you had to take them on like a Philadelphia lawyer going through all kinds of hoops/complaints/top CEO etc. while the unassuming masses got shafted. Glad you got your money nevertheless.