[E. Walter Koenig]

Lufthansa Chooses to Hide From Customers During Lost Baggage Crisis Resulting from the 28 November 2010 Snow Storm in Frankfurt.


Since 29 November 2010 Lufthansa's lost baggage telephone numbers have been not been manned. The snowstorm on 28 November 2010 caused hundreds of flight delays and cancellations. The result has been thousands of checked bags being lost or misdirected. Rather than taking on the issue squarely by providing the best information available to assist passengers, Lufthansa has decided that a better strategy is to hide from customers. The numbers provided for information arent manned. I have personally and repeatedly called Milan, Rome, Frankfurt, and Munich,...all calls have been unanswered. The web baggage search doesnt work. Even emails sent to the complaint site are going unanswered. The only way to speak to a human operator is on the reservation line but the only assistance they give is the provision of the nonworking information numbers. There are no non-reservation information numbers on the websites...even under the"contact us by telephone" section. The reservation agents that I talked to refuse to escallate the issue by providing contact information for management...some even claiming that they dont have any management at all. One reservation attendant admitted that they were overwhelmed with the baggage situation and that calling the information lines was a waste of time as they are all unmanned. |They also admitted that, due to the heavy volume of lost luggage the web based search site was useless because most pieces of luggage werent "logged in".

To have a blackout on communication with customers that is this consistent and widespread is obviously a management strategy. This totally unacceptible and certainly unworthy of an airline like Lufthansa. No one can blame Lufthansa for a snow storm but they can be blamed for abandoning their customers. Im hopeful that senior management learns of this issue and fixes it.