Lufthansa workers strike, company raises white banid and writes to passengers, "Impossible to re-route everyone"

Yesterday, like thousands of other passengers around the world I received the bad news that two of my flights scheduled for March 8 had been canceled. I received the news while I was in the hotel in Bangkok And the canceled flights were part of my return home. London to Milan.

The first thing I did was the chat bot route, that is, the automation that was supposed to help me. It was 7 a.m. in Thailand, 1 a.m. in Germany. Obviously, the bot was unable to automatically reprotect me.

I therefore pointed to LH's local call center, not least because phoning Germany would have cost me a lot of money. After almost 60 minutes of waiting, in which like in Lost every 90 seconds I had to press the 1 button to stay in line, I finally managed to talk to the attendant.

If, however, luck is blind, misfortune sees very well. The attendant could see that my flight was canceled, but for the system it was not, so he could not re-route me.

The unfortunate thing was also my departure from LGW, which is one of the many stopovers in London and not Heathrow or City, and Lufthansa has only one flight a day from Gatwick to Frankfurt. Since the attendant did not see my cancelled flight on the system, she could not then re-route me from another airport or on a different route than the one booked. There was no way we could scale back the issue or even special treatment for a business class and Gold Star Alliance passenger.

Dulcis in fundo tells me " Even if I could move it to the next day's flight, Saturday, March 9, 99% is canceled because of the aftermath of the strike."

This morning's email

Now, as I am flying to the US, I got an email where basically Lufthansa gives up and in a nutshell tells me.: "We have no idea if and when we will be able to bring all our passengers home, you might want to find an alternative solution.

We follow up on information provided yesterday about the Green union's upcoming 60-hour strike. The impact on our flight schedule, especially on Thursday, March 7 and Friday, March 8, is huge. We had to cancel many flights on both days of the strike and unfortunately also take action on your travel plans. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

In the meantime, many of you have received an e-mail from us recommending a rebooking alternative, the option to choose a more suitable alternative, or to cancel the reservation altogether.

If you have not yet received a message with a reservation change alternative, this is due to the massive effects of the strike Greens, as well as the heavily loaded flights in the days following the end of the strike, which made it very difficult to find the right flight for each guest.

If you feel that the best option for you is to cancel the entire reservation, you can do so through our chat assistant. Of course, in this case we will refund the entire ticket price.

If you wish to rebook your flight, our Service Center will be happy to assist you at +49 69 86799799. For calls from abroad, you can find our international service numbers here. Due to current events, please note that there may be longer wait times than usual.

I fall into exactly this case study, no reprotection possible in the short term and having to absolutely return to Italy and Milan Linate where I have the car I had no choice but to book a ticket with Easyjet, what will be in memory my second experience with this airline.

Of course, I don't worry about the consequences. My American Express Platinum will take care of the extra expenses. that guarantees me coverage, for situations like this, nor to reimbursement since LH is celebrated for returning the money in very little time and without much bureaucracy.

I am more sorry because I will miss those miles on my Krisflyer account, since I had deliberately chosen to LH with a stopover in Frankfurt specifically to rack up a few thousand qualifying points on my Singapore loyalty card.

• strikes