One of 134,000
Yes, I was one of the 134,000 passengers stranded in Germany because of airport ground staff strikes - right on the day I wanted/had to get back to Taiwan. First of all: Lufthansa crisis management was terrible. (Or was there any?) German companies try to reduce human labour, because it is so "expensive". (So a train ticket costs more if you buy it from a human agent instead of a ticket machine.) That means Lufthansa had only one telephone hotline (in Frankfurt), which of course was DDOS'd.
OK, there is a "chat assistant" on the LH website which should solve several problems, so you don't need to talk to a human being. That chat assistant could of course not find an alternative flight for me (not surprising when Lufthansa flies to HK only once a week and the assistant only searches for alternatives on the same day) and was later not even able to find my booking - because it too was DDOS'd.
LH had announced through media not to go to the airports, but that was actually the only place where one could talk to human beings. Unfortunately I got there too late: After queuing for 2.5h on Tuesday the two (2) counters trying to find alternative flights closed. The two people manning them said that they had to (it was 8PM) and that they weren't Lufthansa staff anyway. (On that day nobody was.)
The LH information desk, which had previously refused to deal with any booking-related issues then at least issued paper copies with advice and told us that we could also book other flights ourselves and then charge Lufthansa. Funnily there was a man in an expensive suit outside the info desk telling people not to do that, because Lufthansa would find them new bookings - contradicting the LH info desk. He did however claim not to be LH staff (Nah, looked more like middle management, not common staff...) but couldn't answer me when approximately LH would find us flights. In my case with only one flight a week to HK I may need to wait for two or three weeks, and even that only if LH reactivates their A380s, because those rare flights to HK are almost full. There was a woman from Albania who was totally confused because she wanted to fly to Albania that day, but the flight was overbooked and someone had given her a piece of paper with "30.07." circled - a mere four days to (hopefully) get to Albania.
It was nice to see that although the affected people were clearly not amused, they did not attack the staff in any way - but neither got any satisfying answers. Everyone was aware that Lufthansa management had caused these problems. In the end I found a flight with Finnair and flew back via Helsinki. But Lufthansa - nah. First their genuflection for the CCP, then taking nine (9) billion in government support during Corona (LH market value was 4.5 billion) and granting the state a mere 20% share, but still laying off staff in all areas, then not rehiring in time and not paying adequately. Lufthansa, I will only fly with you again if there is no other way.
#Lufthansa