Lufthansa flight delay compensation

Lufthansa owes €250, €400 or €600 per passenger when arrival is at least three hours late, the flight was cancelled at short notice, or boarding was denied. Lufthansa may halve the amount only where it re-routed you inside the windows Article 7(2) sets out.

What Lufthansa owes, by distance

When it applies: Arrival 3+ hours late, cancellation notified less than 14 days ahead, or denied boarding. The figures come from EU Regulation 261/2004 and are per passenger, including children on their own ticket.

How to claim, in four steps

1. Work out what Lufthansa owes. Enter the route, the date and how late you arrived. A flight from Frankfurt is often covered by two statutes at once, and the calculator shows which of them pays more.
2. Write the demand. The letter is dated, cites EU Regulation 261/2004 by article, and is addressed to Deutsche Lufthansa AG. Nothing you type leaves your browser.
3. Send it to Lufthansa. Use “Application for compensation for flight irregularities” below, and keep a copy of what you submitted. A claim that exists only in a phone call cannot be proved afterwards.
4. Escalate to Germany's Luftfahrt-Bundesamt. If Lufthansa refuses or says nothing, the calculator writes the chaser and then the escalation letter, naming that regulator and citing the article the airline ignored.

Where to send it — Lufthansa's own claim pages

• Application for compensation for flight irregularities
• Fast compensation — application for compensation and reimbursement
• Passenger rights

Lufthansa offers a reduced payment — half the statutory figure — where it re-routed you within the Article 7(2) windows. Check the re-routed arrival time against your original one before accepting: outside those windows the reduction does not apply.

The refusals Lufthansa sends, and what answers them

Each of these has a settled answer in case law — the EU261 page sets out the judgments, names the cases, and quotes what the airline has to prove instead.

Other things that go wrong on a Lufthansa flight

• When the airline blames a technical fault — when Lufthansa blames a technical fault
• Airline strike compensation — when Lufthansa cancels because of a strike
• “Extraordinary circumstances” — what actually counts — when Lufthansa blames an earlier flight
• Your flight was cancelled — when Lufthansa offers a voucher instead of money
• Should you use a claim company? — when Lufthansa ignores you — and why you still do not need a claim company
• You missed your connection — a missed connection on a Lufthansa itinerary
• Denied boarding and overbooking — being bumped from an overbooked flight by Lufthansa
• They moved you to a lower class — being moved to a lower class by Lufthansa
• Your bag did not arrive — a bag Lufthansa delayed or lost
• Stuck at the airport: what the airline owes you now — meals and a hotel while Lufthansa leaves you waiting

Questions

Open the calculator with Lufthansa selected →

Claiming from Lufthansa in practice

Which band your route falls into, from FRA

Distance decides the amount, and it is measured as the great-circle distance between the two airports — not the miles flown. These are real distances from Lufthansa's main base, so you can see where the thresholds sit before you measure your own route.

If Lufthansa refuses or says nothing

The regulator for Lufthansa is Germany's Luftfahrt-Bundesamt (LBA) (lba.de). Take the claim there once the airline has had its chance to answer and has either refused or gone silent — bring the dated letter, the airline's reply, and your booking reference. Stage 3 of the calculator writes the escalation letter that names this body.

How long you have: Three years in Germany, counted from the end of the calendar year in which the flight took place.

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