A friend mentions she paid for business class ticket and while she traveled in business class, in Germany prior to departure she was not provided with access to the business class lounge or any lounge.
No food no drink no anything was provided, despite her asking numerous times.
She was not given any explanation why this was so.
I assume she is entitled to compensation. True?
If so, how is such an amount decided?
No.
Business class access to airport lounges is subject to the terms and conditions of the carrier, whether they offer complimentary lounge access to business class passengers, whether the airport has a lounge accessible with the airline in question and whether the affiliated lounge accepts the airlines business class passengers.
An example of eligibility is QantasâŠ
It is most likely there wasnât eligibility at the airport in question. Even if there was and it wasnât used, as it is complimentary, the opportunity to use was forfeited.
Just because a lounge may exist at an airport, it doesnât mean it can be used by a particular airlineâs passengers. An example being and from the above website, Qantas business passengers in Europe have access to only two lounges, one in London and one in Rome. If they fly to Germany, they donât have airport lounge access using their Qantas business class tickets.
Without specifics of the travel and airline, âcasualâ business (or first) pax are usually only given lounge access for international, not domestic (or intra EU?), flights unless it is directly connecting to an international leg (that being carrier dependent).
Platinum/premium flyers and those paying for lounge membership have their own perks, the QF example is obvious from the QF page @phb posted.
Additional situations where no access might offered is that lounges can be closed (anything from maintenance to a mismatch of operating hours vis a vis flights as well flight delays beyond operating hours), or they can be at legal capacity.
As for QF, if one upgrades to business and only gets the upgrade cleared at the gate, QF has/had no obligation to provide lounge access. One could however decline the seat upgrade on that flight and hope for a better experience next time.
The airline is Lufthansa and I understood business class pax were bussed to what they thought was a lounge in another terminal but were merely moved to another waiting area. The flight was international I recall, not intra-EU. There was no other airline involved, no code sharing etc. Thanks to your feedback, I emailed her asking if she had any membership status with the airline and if she knows - after the fact - if the lounge was closed.
I will verify but believe there was eligibility to access the lounge and she made it clear to check in staff that she wanted to access the lounge. Weâre talking LH lounge in Munich for LH pax.
Lufthansa has lounges operated by independent third party contractors at Munich, Other lounges are operated by AirFrance, Emirates and a number of privately operated lounges (which can be used for a entry fee).
We wonât know why entry was refused or the lounge was unavailable. It could be confusion on either end, wrong desk/lounge approached for entry, lost in translation, temporarily closed for cleaning/refurbishment/function, the lounge had reached its licensed patron number, the ticket class as ineligible for the particular lounge (such as accidentally going to a Lufthansa Senator Lounge) etc.
Irrespective of this, it becomes he said, she said and compensation wonât be applicable as they are complimentary, subject to availability, and as they say "donât use it, lose itâ. If the lounge was unavailable for entry for some reason, there is little an eligible passenger can do.
If there was a genuine concern about not being able to enter the lounge one thinks they should be able to, it should have been raised at the time at the airport with the airline. Airlines have help desks for such purposes, especially when lounges are run by another party.
Compensation in the real sense for something which is complimentary isâŠnil.
If a pass had been bought to use a lounge and entry was subsequently refused for no fault of the passenger (say wasnât drunk, abusive etc), this would be a different situation.
FWIW LH has major hubs at Munich and Frankfurt and excellent lounges would be expected, never over capacity unless Godzilla was on the prowl. Having had nothing but good experiences with LH save for the following. I suspect there may be more to the story.
That being written it once took 9 mos to get a small refund when I paid for a booked seat and they assigned a random one anyway, so they are not infallible.
I noticed on the Lufthansa website they close lounges from time to time. An example being:
From July 17 to around the end of August 2023, the Lufthansa Business Lounge in Dusseldorf is undergoing renovations. During this period we invite you to use the Lufthansa Senator Lounge, capacity permitting.
It is also worth noting the above notification indicates that availability is subject to capacity limits.
Not infallible. I have a good German mate that flies to Germany regularly to see family, and choses not to fly with them for a range of reasons/past experiences.
I am yet to fly with them to pass judgement.
You say the lounge is âsubject to availabilityâ. Surely this does not mean LH can unilaterally decide if the maximum capacity has been reached? If so, whatâs to stop it declaring âfull houseâ as often as it likes?
You say that the lounge is âcomplimentaryâ and hence not subject to compensation if not granted. Where do you draw the line b/w what is âcomplimentaryâ and what is âexpectedâ? If food in business class was not much better than in economy or the seats were not much wider, are they also âcomplimentaryâ and if undelivered not subject to a compensation request?
The operator of their lounges can. Many countries have restrictions on the number of patrons for safety reasons, alcohol licensing requirements, fire safety etc. An example recently which you would be familiar was during Covid when maximum capacities were severely restricted or lounges closed due to potential health risks.
It is complimentary as it is offered as part of the class of ticket purchased. As a result, the airlines can state conditions associated with the offer. As indicated above in the Qantas example, this can include when and where lounges are availableâŠand subject to availability.
Many businesses offer complimentary services or products as part of a purchase. These are subject to conditions and most also have conditions associated with availability. An example being promotions run by supermarkets which offer things that can be collected. These are complimentary and in addition to the purchase. The supermarkets make it clear in their promotions that the offer is âsubject to availability and/or when the items run outâ. One canât ask the supermarket for compensation because it happens to run out of the complimentary offering or they arenât available in a particular store/time.
No, this is what you have paid for. If you think that say for a similar priced ticket that food on Singapore Airlines is better than Air FranceâŠalong with the seats being betterâŠwhen you fly with Air France you canât ask for compensation because their airline seats/food isnât as good as Singapore Airlines. Likewise with business class and economy. If you think that there was no difference between economy and business class, then one has the right to lodge a complaint with the airline. One doesnât have a right to ask for compensation under the Australian Consumer Law.
If you paid for business class and they downgraded you to economy, then this is a different proposition and can be subject to a compensation claim under the Australian Consumer Law. The claim being that purchased services were not supplied.
Some airlines also offer other complimentary services for business class ticket holders, such as chauffeured pick-up and drop off, seats that turn into beds rather than reline, fast track security, priority boarding, priority immigration and the list goes on. All of these are complimentary and subject to availability. Not being able to use them for some reason, doesnât mean that one can ask for compensation because one didnât.
In relation to the situation at hand, one has the ability to lodge a letter of complaint with Lufthansa that business class lounge was unavailable at the time of travel through Munich. An airline might be interested in particularly where their lounges are contracted out. A letter of complaint is different to a letter of demand/claim under the Australian Consumer Law for compensation and possibly the avenue to take if the friend feels the need to let Lufthansa know. This can be done online here:
Thanks for the comprehensive reply. It is very informative.
Iâll explain why compensation canât be asked using another example:
Lets assume I have a friend Bob. He loves to go to the gym and has gym membership at a local gym. He drives to the gym and chose the one he goes to because it has free parking. The gym advertises itself as having free parking. One day when Bob decides he wants to go to the gym, he arrives only to find the carpark is full. There arenât any parks anywhere so he returns home disappointed that he couldnât do his workout.
The carpark is what is called a complimentary benefit or service to having gym membership. Bob doesnât pay for the parking and it formed part of the decision to why he goes to that particular gym.
For Bob, like your friend, he doesnât have the ability to claim compensation because a free (complimentary) car park wasnât available on the day in question. It would be an unreasonable expectation to claim for compensation. Bob however can give feedback to the gym owners about the parking problem hoping they will look into it.
The same applies if Bob doesnât like the carpark because it is not undercover (doesnât like birds pooping on his duco) or thinks the car parking spaces could be wider (being very tall to make it easier for him to get in or out of his car). These arenât grounds for compensation, but he is welcome to raise his concerns with the gym owner.
Lets change the above slightly. Lets now assume that the gym allows its customers to buy a car parking space in addition to the gym membership, to ensure a parking spot is reserved for when at the gym. The carpark is no longer complimentary and Bob could reasonably assume a carpark would be available any time he goes to the gym. If his reserved carpark isnât available for use when at the gym, he would have grounds to seek compensation or a refund under the Australian Consumer Law as the purchased service wasnât provided.
Likewise if lounge access pass had been purchased for Munich airport, and the lounge couldnât be accessed for some reason, this would give grounds for a claim under the ACL. As it wasnât purchased and was complimentary, if one is dissatisfied feedback can be provided back to the airline.
Again, thanks for the detailed feedback. I await my friend replying to some questions I posed following your earlier comments.
I would be very surprised if lounge access is a condition of the ticket. When I read the conditions on my tickets even a business class seat was not guaranteed!
Having recently flown to Indonesia with Garuda, I did get lounge access but frankly they were so bad they might as well not have bothered. Thankfully the service on the plane was superb.
Spelling Nazi alert: Compliment vs. ComplementâExplanation and Examples
So I could bend your excellent and detailed explanations slightly and suggest that
in the sense that the separately purchased car parking complements the gym membership.
I could also muddy the waters somewhat and suggest, based on the example in my link,
The hotel we booked offers complimentary breakfast.
that if you booked a hotel, and breakfast was included, but for some reason or other the hotel was unable to provide breakfast that day, you might be entitled to compensation - so probably that particular example is not a good one for this topic.
It should be complimentary. Love that autocorrect as you type. I have (manually) corrected the previous posts.
I agree. And âcomplementaryâ would depend on how the product or service was sold and provided. In the above thread, an example of complementary may be meals within a flight. These are usually nominated as inclusions or exclusions (in the case of some budget airlines) when making ticket purchase. If the meal was complementary and not provided, then some sort of restitution (which might include possible compensation) could be reasonably expected. The restitution might not be monetary compensation, but something agreed to by both parties.
The airline did make an error if she was actually refused entry to a lounge at the lounge entrance. It appears though that they bussed her to another departure point where a lounge may not have been available. The responsibility for getting to the lounge once at the terminal is that of the passenger and I suspect if she had found a lounge at the terminal she would have been granted access.
However, I would still encourage her to seek compensation of some sort from the airline. She paid for a business case ticket with the expectation that she would be given lounge access, an expectation created by the airline. Despite the comments above about the fine print, it appears that her requests for lounge access may have been ignored or handled by people who did not know what to do. As a result , one of her primary conditions for choosing business class was not fulfilled by the airline.
As for compensation there arenât fixed rules about this, but a credit or voucher for future travel would be much easier for airline staff to approve than a cash refund, so I would suggest making a request along those lines. Bear in mind a full credit will be highly unlikely to achieve given that she travelled using the ticket, so a partial credit request would be appropriate.
Speaking to a local who used to work in the airline industry, she indicated there can be reasonable grounds to why a passenger might be declined access to airport lounges. Some I have mentioned above.
She indicated some additional ones that refusal can occur is if access is tried within the time nominated for a passenger to be at the boarding gate (+ additional allowance to get to the gate) or if departure is in a different terminal. I got the impression that some lounges take on the responsibility to get lounge patrons/passengers to their gates on time.
She mentioned not having a boarding pass, but this is more relevant to airlines which use paper boarding passes or donât issue ongoing boarding passes.
She indicated that the requirement to meet airport departure slots overrides any passengers desire to visit a lounge to refresh/for refreshments. The cost to an airline can be significant if a departure slot is missed due to late arrival of a passenger at a gate.
