On 26 July at 9pm my clients emailed me and texted again at 11pm cus their flight from Barcelona to Frankfurt on 27 July was cancelled due to airport strike which they found out by the Lufthansa app. They also have a flight with Qatar Airways from Frankfurt - Doha - Phuket on the same day at 5pm to catch.
Normally when there is flight cancellation this would automatically notify me in my flight system but it didn't. Prior to calling the clients while they were in Spain, I tried calling Lufthansa in Europe but the call center was closed for some reason so I rang Qatar to see if we could reroute their ticket to fly out from Barcelona but there was no availability at all.
It was late at night but I was full of adrenaline as my job is to help my clients get to Frankfurt no matter what otherwise they'd be stuck in Europe. I had to think outside the box and eventually found a flight to Stuttgart via Zurich then they can catch a train for 1.5 hr to get to Frankfurt. I held the flight for the clients and called them to check if they were okay.
They were super chilled about it and told me that it's not my fault. I told them the best solution and took them 10 minutes to confirm that they wish to go ahead. They also needed an extra check in bag so I did all that + online check in for them so that they can have their boarding passes ready for their 6am flight the next day.
27 July morning I rang Lufthansa about their cancelled flight so I got a waiver to get their full refund which was great. When I spoke to the reservation team, I asked them if they can check their new flight with Swiss air to see if the flights were still confirmed to go as Swiss air/Lufthansa/Austrian are the same sister companies. I kid you not the guy said only 1 booking per phone call. I was like WTF, you guys have a strike and I was up late fixing this BS for my clients and you couldn't spare another 30 seconds when I was on hold for an hour? The dickhead refused so I was like fine, I'll call again. After another 30 minutes on the phone, guess who I got? The same fucking dickhead. Anyway, got confirmation from him that the flights are still going ahead so now I can relax knowing that my clients will be okay.
I emailed the airline rep about this shitty service and she will pass on my feedback about her team so hopefully they can improve their service. Like it's already bloody hard fixing the issue, have some brain and don't be a robot.
Clients got to Frankfurt safely for their Qatar flight in business class baby! This is the first time in a month where I had to work late night cus I told myself I need work life balance so that I don't make any mistakes. Clients were so nice to me that really made my job much easier to help them out.
Imagined if they booked this online themselves, they would have to scramble and find a way to fix this themselves.
Booking with a Travel Manager like me, when shit hit the roof like this you will have my support. I did all the ground work, gave them the solution so they could have more time shopping on their holiday🛍️
For a $125 service fee per person I can organise your flight, accommodation, travel insurance, transfer, tours etc. If there is any drama, I'll help you fix it so you don't need to spend time calling the airlines, hotels blah blah blah.
📞 0425328050
📧 sekha@itravel-au.com
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