Lufthansa cancels flight – then refuses to offer an alternative

Lufthansa has cancelled more flights for the summer than any other European carrier. The German airline has grounded at least 20,000 departures, mainly through the shutdown of its regional subsidiary CityLine. Under air passengers’ rights rules, customers should be offered alternative flights. But one Scottish passenger has been refused a replacement – with Lufthansa offering only a refund or postponement of the journey.

Rhona Taylor was booked to fly in June on Lufthansa from her home city of Glasgow to Frankfurt. This is one of the routes that the German airline has trimmed in response to the high price of jet fuel.

Her outbound flight was replaced by a departure from Edinburgh to Frankfurt on the same day. Lufthansa is required to pay for the additional transport cost.

But her return flight is simply shown as cancelled, the only options offered were “request refund” and “use ticket later”.

The airline told her: “We have had to make some adjustments to our flight schedule. Unfortunately, an alternative is not available for all sections of your journey.”

Under air passengers’ rights rules Lufthansa is required to provide an acceptable alternative flight in the event of cancellation, including paying for a ticket on a different airline.

Lufthansa said it could not comment on Ms Taylor’s case for data protection reasons. A spokesperson said: “A cancellation without offering any alternative transport or airport is only foreseen in situations where there is no reasonable re-routing option existing within the Lufthansa Group. In this case we would propose a refund and cancel the original booking.”

This is at odds with the UK Civil Aviation Authority’s interpretation of European passengers’ rights rules. A spokesperson for the CAA said: “Passengers are entitled to a choice between re-routing and a refund. In these situations, when there are no same day same route alternatives, re-routing options can include nearby airports, indirect re-routing or re-routing one day either side. This would include other airlines.”

There are many alternative ways to travel between Frankfurt and Glasgow on that day, including on KLM via Amsterdam and British Airways via London Heathrow. Ms Taylor should be able to buy a new ticket and claim the cost from Lufthansa.

Separately, British Airways told two passengers that their Heathrow-Jeddah flight for October was cancelled – and failed initially to offer the option of transferring to Saudia, which also flies the route.

One of them, Richard Madge, said: “I have phoned BA on two occasions so far. They say that they have no availability currently and to keep checking, which seems less than satisfactory.

“When I asked, they said there is nobody to escalate a complaint to. I have written to the Customer Service Team, but they replied that they only deal with post-travel complaints, and told us to phone.

“I am going around in circles.”

After The Independent intervened, British Airways contacted the pair with the offer of transferring to Qatar Airways, via Doha, which was accepted.

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