Our Compensation Clinic this week is about my Lufthansa flight that I took two weeks ago from Almaty via Astana to Frankfurt where Lufthansa didn’t supply lounge access as they cancelled the local lounge contract.

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In addition to the lack of lounge access, the Lufthansa App offered me to pre-order a meal for this flight and I selected a regular dinner that was offered (Beef Cheeks) but once on the flight even the crew was irritated why such a meal was listed for me as it’s apparently only a 9:30h long snack and breakfast flight. The meal was obviously not provided.

It’s been quite a bumpy month for Lufthansa to say the least but this experience has nothing to do with strikes or labor relations. It shows a pattern of negligence and incompetence on the part of the airline that simply doesn’t care about the passenger experience anymore.

The first issue concerning this itinerary was that nobody could actually tell if the flight was in fact operating as it operated on April 13th which was the day of the pilot strikes. But it departed at 1 am Kazakhstan time which wasn’t the 13th yet in Germany. Lufthansa’s plain reply: We don’t know. You’ll see when you get there (I had a connection from Seoul). And since we don’t know we also can’t rebook you on a direct flight from ICN.

Not very reassuring to have Lufthansa make you go to ALA on a 6:30h flight and you might end up being stuck in Kazakhstan for the better part of a week because “they don’t know”. Thankfully the flight ended up operating.

Since it was a rather long transit I decided to check out the airport and went through immigration in Almaty. I was impressed that it’s a very clean and orderly terminal, contrary to let’s say Frankfurt which is a filthy dump.

The Lufthansa counter issued me the onward boarding pass but told me there is no lounge anymore since Lufthansa let the contract expire a few weeks earlier. No voucher for food and beverage was provided either and passengers were instructed to “sit at the gate and wait” for the coming three hours.

I refused to do this and instead paid US$30 cash at the previous contract lounge and decided to claim it back from Lufthansa which I did.

Lufthansa replied to my complaint within two weeks as follows:

Am I really the only passenger who ever pre-ordered a Business Class meal on this ALA-FRA flight? The error must persist for every single passenger booked on this route and I’d imagine pre-ordering your dinner is quite a popular feature that is now offered right in the app.

These were the two meals served:

While this was extremely light for a flight that takes 9:30h with the stop in Astana, I found the quality suitable but remember the flight leaves at 1am and you’ve been awake for basically the entire day. Without a lounge at ALA this is the only food served and that is extremely poor form from Lufthansa.

I wonder if this problem will actually be fixed or if it continues to stick and create havoc for crews and passengers. Why would this problem even exist in the first place, doesn’t anyone at Lufthansa check what they put on their app and website or are they just winging it?

In the end Lufthansa agreed to reimburse my US$30 that I paid for the lounge and a little bonus in form of a 50 Euro cash compensation that will be wired to my account:

I was expecting a rather considerable waiting period for Lufthansa to tend to my file considering the strikes and many open complaints. But I guess most people haven’t filed their complaints yet and it might very well be possible that those filed by Senators are prioritized.

Conclusion

When I flew Lufthansa two weeks ago I had a couple of problems with the services provided on the ground in Almaty where they didn’t offer a lounge anymore and also in the air where the pre-ordered meal was not provided due to a system error (it wasn’t supposed to be offered in the first place).

Lufthansa has A LOT of problems right now. Both with their own management, employees but also with the service culture, competency and disdain for customers. i also have another open EC261 case with Lufthansa, let’s see when they will regulate that.

In this case LH offered a 50 Euro cash payment which I accepted and the amount was wired to my bank account.

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