Robert Silk
Late last month, Shelley Cronin, manager and group specialist for Massachusetts-based Pioneer Valley Travel, had some welcome news.
Nearly four frustrating months after a Lufthansa flight carrying a group Cronin was leading had to turn around twice over the Atlantic and return to Boston, she had finally received a sympathetic message from a Lufthansa group account manager.
"First and foremost, I must express my apologies for the circumstances you and your group experienced during your trip in November," the account manager wrote in a Feb. 23 email. "Secondly, I would also like to acknowledge and apologize for the severe delays and turnaround times we are faced with for customer claims. This is an issue our team is working on resolving as quickly as they can."
Cronin said the email actually made her emotional.
"I told her I really want to cry after getting a real person contacting me after four months," she told me later that day.
The cause of Cronin's aggravation isn't the harrowing flight experience itself. Lufthansa Flight 425 on Nov. 8 between Boston and Munich twice dumped fuel and turned around due to engine problems. Her group of 56 flyers no doubt felt fortunate to be safe after the incidents and were able to make their way to Munich and then on to Florence beginning the next day.
Rather, Cronin's frustration has stemmed from the mostly fruitless several months that followed as she attempted to obtain the $636 in penalties that Lufthansa owes everyone who was on that Nov. 8 flight. Under EU rules, EU-based carriers must pay the penalty for all long-haul flights that are canceled for reasons that are in the airline's control, including mechanical failures. But as of March 7, just 12 of Cronin's 56 clients had received the payout.
In that long-awaited Feb. 23 email, the Lufthansa group account manager referenced the airline's slow turnaround times for customer claims.
That indeed has been a problem for Cronin's group. But the issues they've faced have gone well beyond delays. The inconsistent and sometimes inaccurate responses the Pioneer Valley group has received from customer service agents are even more galling.
Cronin filed the claims one by one for each of her clients, but while the identical claims of some members of the group were accepted, others were denied. On Dec. 8, for example, one of the travelers was told that she would receive no money because the cancellation was caused by "extraordinary circumstances." But mechanical problems are not generally interpreted to be an "extraordinary circumstance" under the EU statute.
In an even more exasperating Feb. 17 email, a Cronin client was told by a Lufthansa agent that "there was no flight irregularity on the flight LH 425 on November 8, 2022." This even though the flight's problems made news reports. In another email, this one on Nov. 30, a group member was offered just $159.
Cronin has also been frustrated by Lufthansa's insistence that she file each claim separately rather than being allowed to file a unified claim with a Lufthansa group service center.
When I queried Lufthansa's North American spokeswoman, Christina Semmel, about why various Pioneer Valley clients received different responses, she allowed that human error is possible.
"We are continuously training new agents to address the increase in feedback volume, and people make mistakes," she said.
But she also said other factors could have played a role, such as changing internal policies, which could cause differing responses for claims that are submitted just a day apart.
In that Feb. 23 email to Cronin, the Lufthansa group manager assured her, "We will get this resolved."
Kudos to that, I say.