Was Our Horrible Experience with Lufthansa Just the Fall of a Once Respected Company or the Reality of the Future of Air Travel?

One of the reasons I am semi-retired is that air travel today is so unpleasant that there is no longer anything to look forward to. As a global futurist, I often flew more than 250,000 miles/year, speaking on all six continents and crisscrossing the U.S. I am a million-mile flyer on two airlines. I was one of those ‘road warriors’, often on four to six flights a week.

But I have never had a string of bad experiences as I have had the past two weeks with Lufthansa. Then again, the experiences may reflect the current and future state of air travel. You be the judge, and please share your opinions and experiences on air travel today, and of course, Lufthansa in particular.

[This column of abuse from an airline is long and a bit of a screed. I hope you read it and respond to anything written below. IF you just want the headlines, here they are:

-my wife and I booked four flights with Lufthansa

-we ended up taking five flights all of which were either cancelled or delayed

-Lufthansa “Customer Service” is an oxymoron. The non-helpfulness, general shrugging of the shoulders, and not taking responsibility were stunning. At every step of our interactions with them they represented how not to treat people, let alone paying customers.

-Finally, what was scheduled to be some 15 hours travel time from hotel in Poland to home in a Chicago suburb turned into 42 hours of travel. It is that, not the jet lag that we are recovering from.]

Context

For the majority of the past 40 years, I have lived in the Chicago area. United’s primary hub and headquarters is in Chicago, and they have two big terminals at O’Hare which perhaps every reader knows. As such I long ago passed the million-mile level with United. When I travelled a lot, I always had United Club membership at all airports and used them regularly. I have long been Gold Status with the Star Alliance.

My wife and I wanted to travel to Europe so, since we have status with United, after price shopping, we decided to book with United. United took our money, gave us reservation numbers and then notified us that we would have to deal with their Star Alliance member Lufthansa.

That is where the problems started.

First, it was suggested that if I wanted to access boarding passes on my phone, I should download the Lufthansa app, which I did and used throughout our 15-day trip.

We were travelling to Budapest, Prague, and Krakow/Auschwitz, so there were two transatlantic flights from Chicago to Frankfurt and two inter-European flights from Frankfurt to Budapest and Krakow to Frankfurt.

Since the only thing that Lufthansa did NOT make a mistake on was luggage [ count your small blessings], the only way I can list the total incompetence of the airline is to write chronologically.

1. The Chicago-Frankfurt plane was an hour late. It was clear that, along with my wife and I, there were a lot of other people who might not make connecting flights. The flight attendants assured us that “ground operations” know about the late flight and will respond accordingly.

Planes can be late; this happens every day all around the world, so lateness is a part of the current and future air travel reality.

2. When we got to Frankfurt, they knew there was a full 747, yet they had only one bus for about a third of the passengers [standing room only, packed, with luggage], and the rest of us had to wait another 10 minutes for a second bus to arrive. The collapsible stairs upon which we deplaned were rickety, shaking whenever a person stepped on them. Rinky-dink, and for seniors, a real perceived risk. No help from Lufthansa. Bus, as in no gate, but rather an 8-10 minute drive to the A terminal, where everyone had to go through German passport control. So, 20 minutes waiting for a bus and then riding one after our plane landed an hour late. There were no Lufthansa personnel on either of the buses, nor were there Lufthansa personnel on the ground except to steer 300+ angry passengers to passport control. There were no Lufthansa people giving out gate information; it was passengers reading the departure boards and telling other passengers. I did spot a Lufthansa employee and asked if they would be holding the flight until we go there. The response: “Run!” Fortunately, several people were making the Budapest connection, so one couple ahead of us had the man roll the luggage, while the woman, who had running shoes on, broke into a run and shouted back that they would tell the plane to wait for us. [Thank you, anonymous woman with running shoes on!] The response from Lufthansa was to hold boarding for another five minutes, which we barely made.

3. The Lufthansa flight from Krakow to Frankfurt two weeks later was late. With the past on-ground experience in our minds, we were rightly concerned. We had to go through passport control again, and then we ran/walked about 100 yards to the terminal where our Chicago flight was located. When we turned the corner, our spirits sank as it must have been a kilometer long, and our flight was at the end, with several broken people movers. So many people avoided them and just started running to our flight and other Lufthansa flights [it was a wholly Lufthansa terminal]. Sweaty, out of breath, we arrived at the gate in time.[ A good friend of mine, whom I have always called one of my wise elders even though he is the same age as me, but he is wise, noted my last sentence of the last column here by saying that he hoped my 42 hours of getting home “did not include a sojourn in the Frankfort Airport, that airport heads my list of hell holes under the disguise of being a transportation hub”]

Again, delayed flights and running to catch connecting flights are now part of air travel. That said, there was no Lufthansa personnel helping passengers at all.

4. So it was about 60 to 90 minutes out from Frankfurt where we hear from the captain that something was wrong with the oil gages on one of the four engines and that the plane will be returning to Frankfurt, slowing down enough to jettison jet fuel [my environmental bells started to go off as some damage occurs in the atmosphere and/or the ground when this is done].

Mechanical difficulties happen, so this is part of the air travel experience.

I turned to my wife and said the obvious: Frankfurt is the center of Lufthansa Aviation, they will either find a plane and crew for later in the evening, or, if that can’t be done, get a plane and crew for tomorrow. Particularly given that it will take a stated 90 minutes to land at Frankfurt. Enough lead time to take care of the 300+ passengers who all now realize they will not be getting home that day or any connections out of Chicago. NO, THAT WOULD BE TOO INTELLIGENT FOR LUFTHANSA [my emphasis], particularly when we learned a few hours later that the Frankfurt-Chicago flight the next day was oversold already. [My wife, a slightly more nervous flyer than I, was upset that she had been told 45 minutes out from Frankfort, not to be worried about all the fire trucks that would greet us upon arrival. There were red lights everywhere.] So here you have an airline operating in its aviation headquarters that, over several hours, made the decision to not deal with the 300+ passengers by substituting another plane either the same day or the next, and instead decides to put all passengers up at nearby airport hotels and go through the hassle of rebooking everyone.

This may be one of the ugly truths about air travel today: airlines are overselling flights so that if one gets cancelled, there is no failsafe, margin of error, or back-up.

When the plane finally landed at Frankfurt, Lufthansa actually had several buses waiting on the tarmac [signifying to us that they knew what to do but just didn’t do it the first time]. But that was it. We were bused to the terminal for passport control, and then the airline completely failed its customers. No Lufthansa people were taking any authority or concern about all of us. Finally, one employee told me that if you want “Customer Service” you have to go ‘over there’ waving her hand vaguely. Since most of my fellow passengers were not being helped, I said something like “ some person in a Lufthansa uniform said to go in this direction, pointing to what I was hoping would be some customer support. It was passenger helping passenger since Lufthansa clearly didn’t seem to care. I got into line with my angry fellow passengers – we had about 25 people ahead of us, and by the time we were at the front of the line the number was up into the hundreds- and we all looked at some 10 windows under the heading Customer Service. Only three windows had anyone helping customers, and the same number were standing around talking to each other. Then one of the three people helping customers shut down her window and walked away. To say the crowd was upset is an understatement.

All the time this was going on, we passengers were getting pinged on our phones with nearby hotels to book rooms in for the night. That was the very first time passengers learned that we would have to stay the night, not any announcement from Lufthansa—poor form. Additionally, we were receiving our rebooking information on our phones. So to set the scene, it is now around 9p. My wife and I hadn’t eaten for some 12 hours [ the flight attendants on the flight that turned back were starting the beverage portion of the meal when we learned we had to return and that it would take a good 90 minutes, decided not to continue the meal service and instead gave everyone a bag of crackers [We were in coach, I am not sure if they gave food to business class]]

We had been rebooked on an 8a flight the next morning – boarding at 7a- to Heathrow London with a three-hour layover before a flight to Chicago. The hotel we had a reservation in had dinner service until 10p and breakfast from 8-10, so that meant that the next time we might eat would be at Heathrow, some 25 hours after we last ate. We said no.

The woman who was helping us decided not to understand our English when we said that we had paid for a Frankfurt -Chicago direct flight and to put us on that flight the next day. She said she had to go speak to her boss. She came back shaking her head. That was when we learned that it was “oversold” and there were no seats available. My wife had seen some old friends on the flight, and they were right in front of us in line. They got on an 11 a.m. flight the next day to Newark with a continuing connection to Chicago. At this point, due to the reality of our situation, our hunger, and the seeming total lack of concern from anyone wearing a Lufthansa uniform, we escalated our frustration. My wife made it clear to this woman “helping” us and to the seemingly more competent employee at the next window that nothing was okay. I started to say that I am a million-mile flyer on United, have gold status on the Star Alliance and demand that we get put on the 11a departure to Newark. The woman, struggling with English [the thought balloon over my head was ‘why is someone in Customer Service on a plane that has been cancelled to the U.S., talk in pidgin English’]. Said she had to go talk to “her boss” again. This boss must have been in one of the two rooms filled with Lufthansa employees that were clearly aware of the meltdown going on, but obviously didn’t care about it enough to help paying passengers. 10 windows available, three being used by Lufthansa and perhaps up to a dozen of them clearly in sightline but doing nothing. The noise level and anger from the hundreds standing in line were growing.

The woman came back and said we were on the Newark flight…..but not the one we stipulated at 11a, but we found out later was the 1p flight. On that 1 p.m. flight, even though we had status and had booked extra legroom, we were in row 40-something and, with shrugging shoulders, were told those were the last seats on the plane.

We found out that it was a lie the next day, when, after waiting in a line that was entirely confusing for say, a dozen people waiting [ a hidden code of letters and numbers not explained to anyone], we finally got someone who responded with our frustration with care. Riccardo Andrade claimed to be a “service manager”. He found some seats that had extra legroom. One service personnel was helpful out of the 100 or so that could have been.

Then we flew across the Atlantic, landing in Newark only slightly late. All of a sudden, we both started to get United Airlines messaging on our phones—finally, a company we can trust. So, feeling we were in good hands and back in the United States, we proceeded to the TSA. Now I have been through TSA hundreds of times but this was the first time I was stopped and told that the “airline had no record of me and to go talk to United” .[“What! I am a million mile flyer with United and just flew four flights with their Star Alliance partner Lufthansa”] I walked up to a United person standing around, who immediately said “how can I help you?” something I hadn’t heard since we left our hotel in Poland. She went to the nearest computer and, after a few minutes, located the problem: in the rebooking activity, someone at Lufthansa had entered an incorrect date for my birthday. Even on the ground in the States, the incompetence of Lufthansa stayed with us.

The United flight from Newark to Chicago was late, but at least there were several apologies by the captain and flight attendants. My wife and I never heard an apology or “sorry for your inconvenience” from any Lufthansa employee except Mr. Andrade.

This column is not searching for an apology. It is warning loyal subscribers that, if at all possible, do not fly Lufthansa. We never will. It is also a call for United to reevaluate Lufthansa being a part of the Star Alliance. The company is not worthy of the association.

Subscribers, please let me know if you have any comments on Lufthansa or the current and future state of air travel. I would love to read them. I will open up comments to all subscribers for this one column.

Postscript: When I eagerly visited the Lufthansa customer feedback website, I was again flummoxed. As you can see, it has a drawn-down menu of problems experienced, assuming that it might have been one problem on one flight, but multiple problems on all flights would mean that I would have to log in numerous complaints. The arrogance of Lufthansa and its’ lack of customer support was clear even in their support page

From beginning to end, a horrible customer experience.