My complaint:
Hi,
I’m writing this email following a difficult and costly return journey on 5th June.
Summary
On the 5th of June my partner and I travelled to Naples airport to return home after attending a family member’s wedding. We expected to board the 14:40 flight to Zurich before arriving home in London that evening. Instead we arrived more than 48hrs later and £1,000 poorer.
Months earlier we had booked both outbound and return trips via Opodo; however, less than a week later we were informed that the first leg of our outbound flight had been cancelled by the airline. We were offered and accepted a refund which we believed to be for the outbound legs which were no longer available. We found an alternative one-way flight to Naples, booked it and prepared for our journey.
I can find no details of the cancellation, nor can I recall clear messaging that it would be both our outbound and return flights cancelled. Instead, we continued to receive messaging indicating that we still had seats on our return journey. This included ation emails from Opodo (attached), as well as updates on flight status from Swiss (attached). These arrived even on the day we thought we would be flying. Additionally, both Opodo and Swiss showed our reservation and displayed flight status on both their apps (screenshots).
On arrival at the airport we were told by Swiss air check in staff that there was a problem. We had a reservation for the flight, our names were associated with seats, but no ticket could be found. What followed was easily the most frustrating three hours of my life:
[i] Swiss air staff suggested we call Lufthansa to re-associate the ticket despite not having taken the outbound journey (which never flew, so we could never have taken it).
[ii] Lufthansa said they couldn’t help because they weren’t in charge of the ticket.
[iii] The ticket sales team at the airport made 7 calls over an hour to try and purchase a new ticket but could neither buy our already-reserved seats nor new seats (the flight was full despite our physical seats sitting empty).
[iv] Opodo informed us that they couldn’t act as it was less than 72 hrs before our flight.
I believe the communication around which flights we were being offered refunds for was executed improperly, or (worse) was just poorly designed. I’m also sure that there was an error between parties involved in order for the ticket to be cancelled, but the reservation to remain. This is likely why we continued to receive misleading information regarding the status of our flight and our eligibility to fly on it, even up until the date of intended departure.
If you feel you can help me understand how why this happened I would greatly appreciate it. I also hope that you would want to find out how such a common event, the cancellation of a flight by an airline, could so easily lead to such a negative outcome for customers in order to prevent it happening in future.
Flight Details
Airline Booking Reference:
Opodo Booking Reference:
Operator Outbound: Lufthansa (1st and 2nd Leg)
Operator Inbound: Swiss International (1st Leg), Helvetic (2nd Leg)
Known Timeline
Original Booking Placed: 2nd Feb, 2022
Outbound 1st Leg Flight Cancellation: 22nd Feb, 2022
Refund Requested: Shortly after 22nd Feb, 2022
Alternative Outbound Flight Booked (not listed above): 27th Feb, 2022
Refund Received: 3rd April, 2022
Unable to board return flight: 5th June, 2022
Arrival home: 7th June, 2022
Suggested solution:
Compensate for the costly return journey which was needed in lieu of the flights we had booked.
