Why is the Lufthansa Lost Bag Scandal Being Kept Secret?
For all of us who fly for a living or in general who fly for leisure or to visit family , choosing Lufthansa was always a guarantee of comfort, safety, punctuality and professionalism. This however is now in the past. Over the past 10 days, thousands of travelers flying on Lufthansa and going through German airports never received their luggage on arrival at destination and were forced to withstand endless queues to declare these lost.
The question is why is this scandal not being covered by any press medium? My experience is similar to that of hundreds who you will find on Twitter calling on Lufthansa to at least give them an answer as to why their luggage was never loaded on the plane in the first place. We’re not talking one or two misplaced suitcases here. As it appears, at least 20 planes have taken off from German airports with no baggage ever loaded.
I will add to this as I still wait for my luggage to arrive in Athens 7 days later, that I checked in my bags alone at Munich Airport and was never asked to show my passport at any point before boarding the plane. And then the pilot kept us stranded inside the plane for two hours supposedly because we lost the slot position and then because we needed to get the plane de-iced but assured us that luggage had been loaded while the crew offered us a “complimentary drink” in response to the delay.
Keeping People on Board Planes for Hours to Avoid Compensation
We all know that airline companies are using all tricks in the book to avoid paying out compensation for delays and lost luggage: one of these is keeping passengers locked up in planes for hours supposedly ready for take-off. This way no one can say they were delayed.
The issue with Lufthansa and Munich Airport is that there are apparently no employees. So I ask:
1) Why isn’t the German airline announcing that it is unable to cope with the passenger traffic especially at this time of year and instead booking tickets and pocketing money but not offering services it has been paid for?
2) Why isn’t Munich Airport and all other German airports servicing Lufthansa not taking emergency measures?
3) Why isn’t there any tightened security in a country that has been a terrorist target repeatedly during the holidays and instead due to lack of staff (?) being lax about passport control?
4) Why isn’t anyone from Lufthansa taking the professional courtesy to answer the thousands of passengers who have not received their luggage over the past two weeks and worse yet, suffered canceled flights or remain stuck in airports?
5) Why aren’t journalists and the media who would have written about such situations in an instant if these were in any other country of the world turning a blind eye?
6) How can an airport in a country where it snows regularly in the winter not be ready for a flurry — because in all honesty that’s what it was last Friday, and not a blizzard. I should know, I was born in Chicago.
Has Lufthansa Really Been Saved?
I should remind that Germany’s once glorious flagship carrier was saved at the 11th hour from going bankrupt two years ago by German billionaire Heinz Hermann Thiele.
The European Commission had back then given the green light to Germany’s plans to recapitalize Deutsche Lufthansa AG (DLH) to help the ailing carrier stand on its feet.
And though in September Lufthansa pilots agreed to not go on strike until June 2023 over wage disputes, a visit to Germany’s airports indicate that something is clearly wrong. In 2020, the German carrier said it would cut some 20,000 jobs.
In the meantime, the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the trade body representing global airlines, is constantly nagging about the sad state of affairs for the sector which has however reached the point of total disrespect for the people who pay to keep it alive. Since the outbreak of Covid-19, IATA has been sending out press releases about the tragedy for the sector that initially would take years to recover and which according to its latest report earlier this month is set to become profitable next year.
From the glorious days of the past, Lufthansa’s reputation for German precision has now become #lufthansalostmybag and #neverlufthansa among other hashtags that can be found inundating twitter as well as a new group LufthansaNeverAgain created by distraught passengers like myself waiting helplessly for a miracle as there is no one to contact.
Meanwhile, according to accounts by travelers with luggage trackers, they can see their suitcases dumped somewhere in Frankfurt and Munich airports but may never get them back because it may in the end be costlier for Lufthansa to transfer all the piled up luggage on cargo flights than to simply payoff each one of us with a tiny sum.
Germany and the Others
As a Greek-American who has been traveling regularly for the past 40 years and very often with Lufthansa, I can only wonder if any of the above situations had happened in Greece or at Greek airports, I know the German press would be having a heyday. I can only imagine the gruesome newspaper titles should Greeks have failed to check passengers upon entry into the plane. And I can clearly remember the accusatory titles when it snowed in Athens — a rare phenomenon. And yet here we are in 2022 in the midst of winter, ahead of Christmas and a new year, and Munich Airport was full of snow, with empty counters, no employees and no security checks, endless queues and no one from Lufthansa to take responsibility for the services it has failed to offer the people who are paying to keep it flying.
