Delay at the airport: will airlines delay the reimbursement?
Photo: Michael Hanschke / dpa
According to an evaluation by the Flightright portal, German airlines delay the reimbursement of tickets particularly often.
Lufthansa, TUIfly, Eurowings and Condor ended up in the lower places in the evaluation, as Flightright announced.
The Hungarian airline Wizz Air came in last.
While the direct flight providers Ryanair and Easyjet have already paid for 77 and 70 percent of the applications submitted, Lufthansa only responded to the claims for 30 percent, the portal said.
TUIfly has a reimbursement rate of 34 percent, Condor 40 percent and the Lufthansa subsidiary Eurowings 41 percent.
The Hungarian Wizz Air only paid twelve percent of the time.
The Flightright portal takes on cases of eligible passengers whose flights have been delayed by more than three hours or have been canceled at short notice.
Claims against participation in accordance with the EU Passenger Regulation are then submitted to the airlines and, in some cases, enforced through litigation.
However, the legal company does not name any absolute number of cases for the present analysis and invokes competition reasons.
Outdated processes instead of digitization?
Flightright expert Claudia Brosche criticized Lufthansa in particular, which had actually reimbursed quickly before the corona crisis.
For example, she is now referring to outdated procedures that have long been digitized at many other airlines.
The "delay tactic" is surprising and cast a bad light on the largest German airline.
Lufthansa rejected the allegations.
Since the beginning of 2021, the number of reimbursements that are still open has fallen to a value like before the pandemic and the claims would usually be met within the statutory period, said a spokesman.
In 2021, 1.5 billion euros were reimbursed.
In many cases, automatic reimbursement is possible.
TUIfly, which has integrated an automated reimbursement into its online offer, did not want to comment on the allegations.
jlk / dpa
