Lufthansa passengers at a corona test center at Frankfurt Airport
Photo: Michael Probst / APThere are new tensions between the federal government and Lufthansa after the laborious agreement on a multi-billion dollar aid program. According to SPIEGEL information, the economic department is irritated that, despite the gigantic aid package of around nine billion euros, the airline has still not reimbursed all customers for the costs of canceled and canceled flights. For the entire past week, the ministry exchanged partly armored e-mails with the company.
State Secretary Ulrich Nussbaum confirmed the tensions after a SPIEGEL inquiry. "It is incomprehensible that Lufthansa, despite the massive state aid, has not yet met its legal obligations and does not repay customers their money immediately," said Nussbaum. The State Secretary warned that it was a "question of trust". Already during the negotiations on the aid package, this topic had been discussed, and the Federal Government said that a quick reimbursement was "very important", said Nussbaum.
In reality, Lufthansa is still in default with many customers. According to a statement made to the Federal Aviation Office on August 3, only 3.24 of 4.48 million reimbursement applications have been processed, while around 1.24 million applications are still pending. According to the letter, only around half of the 378,000 applications for reimbursement have been processed at Eurowings. The so-called refunds are about a lot of money. Overall, CEO Carsten Spohr recently admitted that the costs for the tickets to be reimbursed add up to three billion euros.
In the seven-page letter, Lufthansa meekly admits deficits. "Despite enormous efforts", the airline was in many cases not able to meet the payment deadline "in accordance with our own claims and the legal requirements". All airlines are legally obliged to compensate their customers seven days after a canceled flight. At Lufthansa, however, many of the around three million affected customers have been waiting for their money for several months. The fact that the German flagship airline hangs behind its international competitors is causing people to shake their heads in Berlin.
In the letter Lufthansa promises improvement. The airline cites the reason for the delays that one of the most important call center service providers in India was only able to work to a limited extent for a long time because of the lockdown there. In addition, the large number of reimbursement applications simply overwhelmed the airline. The monthly refund volume is about seven times as high as in normal times. Critics, however, argue that the airline was able to foresee the wave of reimbursements due to the corona crisis early on, but did nothing to prepare.
The slow processing will definitely have consequences. According to SPIEGEL information, the Federal Aviation Office has initiated administrative offense proceedings. After Lufthansa provided the authority with initial information, the officials there consider a fine of between half a million and one million euros to be appropriate for the hesitant processing of the refunds. Compared to the billions in budget retained by Lufthansa for the millions of tickets to be reimbursed, these are almost not even the proverbial peanuts.
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