Interesting Lufthansa Compensation Claim Rejection
I flew from Seoul to London, with a transfer in Munich. All with Lufthansa. Both flights, Seoul to Munich and Munich to Heathrow were cancelled the day before departure due to the pilot strikes. Eventually, I made it back to London more than 24 hours later that my original arrival time through another airline that lufthansa arranged.
My understanding of this situation, along with many other people in the strike is that it is a pretty straight forward compensation claim. I submitted my claim a few days after getting home under the Seoul-Munich flight, claiming under EU261, plus claiming for extra costs incurred as a direct result of the cancellation.
Lufthansa replied to my claim 3 weeks after submission stating that my flight from Belgrade to Bilbao (Spain, an EU country) did not involve departure/arrival in an EU country, so the claim is outright rejected?
Of course this information is completely incorrect, I flew from Seoul-Munich-London. I have never flown to or from Belgrade/Bilbao. I was pretty frustrated that there had been a mix up, I asked that my case be reviewed properly as it clearly had not been looked at.
The following day I received another email stating that because I flew from a non-EU country to a non-EU country I have no grounds for compensation.
From my understanding the agent reviewing my case has completely misunderstood EU261. The agent initially stated Spain was not an EU country, so I suspect they are new, and probably not living in Europe either. His English was also quite poor in some parts of his final email, something AI would have ironed out had he used it.
I asked if their response was final, arguing my case that both flights were arriving and departing from an EU country, with a European airline. They dismissed what I said without addressing it and suggested approaching (SÖP).
I am now waiting for my case to be reviewed by them. I am honestly just surprised at how bad this customer service experience has been. Others here seem to have got through without any hitches. I made this post to see if anyone else has had such an experience, and to ask if I may have misunderstood the regulation in any way?
Flying with Lufthansa from Seoul into Munich, then onward to London, both flights cancelled due to strikes the day before departure (an avoidable disruption).
Thanks for your time.