Lufthansa play havoc with soloist’s flight

Lufthansa play havoc with soloist’s flight

main

norman lebrecht

August 19, 2017

From Marshall Marcus, CEO of the EUYO:

KAFKA RULES AT LUFTHANSA! A wonderful few hours trying to get Christian Lindberg to his EUYO rehearsal and concert tomorrow in Bolzano.

 

Lufthansa cancel his Stockholm Munich flight today at little notice and without asking him, book him on a flight 24 hours later which is no use to him. There is not a single Lufthansa person in the airport to talk to, no one on the phone at Lufthansa, and the lovely lady at SAS in Stockholm explains that without talking to Lufthansa she cannot change his flight.

So on to Specialised Travel where the wonderful Nichole puts a hold on a better flight today, but hey presto, we can’t buy the ticket until the previous coupon is closed. The airport say we can’t close it at the airport and Lufthansa, who we get on the phone eventually, says we can’t change it on the phone. By this time Christian has missed the new flight and some Lufthansa idiots say there is no more space on it anyway (not true as we have a hold on the seats through Specialised). So we fire Lufthansa and very speedily and easily buy an SAS ticket online.

So, end of the saga? Not so quick: as Specialised say, if the outward coupon on the Lufthansa flight is not closed before tomorrow morning’s outbound flight then Christian also loses his return to Stockholm. So now Christian is told by us to go back to the Lufthansa check-in desk and argue the case with non-existent Lufthansa staff. Lufthansa WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!!!!!!!!

 

Comments

  • Tom Moore says:

    At least the USA does not seem to be to blame.

  • lachera says:

    Conductors and soloists are cutting it a bit too close.

  • BillG says:

    It happens to common people, too.

  • Edgar says:

    Lufthansa is too occupied with taking over bankrupt Air Berlin, and thus is unable and unwilling to assist traveling musicians. Not much good to be expected for the future.

  • Anon says:

    All airlines today are more or less the same and have the same shitty way of doing business. The differences between them come down to flight plan on the desired route and the quality of the airports traveling in-between.

    Customer service is ridiculous, telephone lines are robotic, and humans on the other end either not available or outright mentally challenged.
    Exceptions apply, occasionally you run into sane people with a brain and a heart, who need no MBA degree to understand, that passengers are humans, not freight objects.
    But those are rare.

  • Anon says:

    Difference here comes down to the local airline having humans on location, the remote one not. (SAS in Stockholm)
    Had the journey been Frankfurt-Stockholm on SAS, the story would have been the same but with reversed roles.

  • William Osborne says:

    Lufthansa did exactly the same thing to my wife. According to EU law, they must compensate the affected passenger. We made a claim. They simply ignored it.

  • MOST READ TODAY: