MmePerdu

Nor does it need any encouragement to incite which it does so well already. But yes, funny indeed.

els20008

29FEB - good catch! An unknowingly applicable oversight on my part.

Thank you all for the comments. The discussion was definitely helpful. May all of your travel be smooth and to beautiful destinations.

Jeff_Costa_Rica

Exactly this scenario just happened to me: Incoming flight by almost three hours. (Weather) Got to the gate for my connecting flight just as the door was closing. They'd given my seat away. I thought of this thread as I was running to catch the flight. Like the OP, I didn't make it. It's frustrating, to be sure, but I'd laugh at me if I said, "I'm going to sue."

Jeff_Costa_Rica

Second sentence above: "Incoming flight delayed by almost three hours."

sulaiman

We had a very frustrating experience with the customer relations department of LH and their boarding staff in Doha, Qatar . Last September me and my wife bought returned tickets on LH to Amsterdam via Frankfurt . We were supposed just to change flight in same terminal in Frankfort within three hours . Unfortunately an arrogant boarding supervisor at Doha airport denied my wife boarding the plane. His reason was that her passport did not have her signature. He said that the German Customs are so strict on that . We found that excuse so strange as first we are not going to enter Frankfurt while changing flight in same terminal. We tried also to explain to him that many Syrian passports don't have such signatures as most of passports are submitted by DHL in other countries, that she is resident in Qatar for over 30 years and her present passport was issued about four years ago and still valid, and that her passport has been used in many travels abroad including USA and she had already US, not to mention that this passport has a valid visa from The Netherlands Embassy in Jordan. No matter how we tried to convince that supervisor he insisted not to allow her board the plane. Instead he held her passport and tried with his personal mobile take a photo of the passport without our permission. Then he asked us in rude way to step back and called the security. I asked him to give me the telephone number of LH office he refused. I told him that his behavior with two senior old respected persons was not accepted and not expected; but he did even apologize. We managed to get the telephone number of LH in Germany and made four international phone calls talking to different agents who confirmed that my wife could simply sign the passport but the arrogant supervisor refused even to talk to the agent on phone saying “ I DON’T TAKE ORDERS FROM ANYBODY ON PHONE”.
As we had tight schedule in Netherlands we searched for other flight on same night so we bought other two return tickets on Turkish Airlines and paid about QR 5800 for them.
Since then I have been writing complaint to Lufthansa customer relations and made several comments on LH Tweeter. I reminded them of the EU regulation N 261/2004 regarding the rights of passengers against denial of boarding. The Customer Relations only replied once with reference id and never replied again since 7 weeks now ; while I received three confirmations from LH Tweeter page that they have sent two reminders to the customer relations and could do nothing more.
We would appreciate if you could advise us on how to get refund and compensation for the agony that supervisor has inflected on us.

sulaiman

PS. As for supervisor claim on German custom being strict on matters of passport signature, later while we were in Netherlands we did take a bus to Frankfort and our passports were checked at one stop by German Customs and nothing happened.

sulaiman

# She holds US Green Card

P_M

Welcome to Fodor's, I see this is your first post.

I don't know the requirement for every country, but US passports do require a signature and it wouldn't surprise me if most other countries require the same.

http://traveltips.usatoday.com/sign-...rt-107239.html

You mentioned that some Syrian passports do not have a place for a signature. Is that the case with your wife's passport, or has she just not signed it yet?

sulaiman

Thank you for comments. Actually the Syrian passports do have page for signature. But for many Syrians abroad where there is no Syrian embassy the Syrians ( like my wife) would process their passports by DHL and so they don't have applications to be signed . Yes my wife did not sign that page , but even though she did not have any problem so far with her passport when she got the green card or when she got the visa to Netherlands not to mention the actual resident permit for years in Qatar using same passport. However, when we called the Lufthansa airlines at the incident day and explained the problem the agent confirmed it would not be a problem and said that my wife could just sing that page now but the local supervisor refused as the page is laminated. Then however after we went to Amsterdam via Turkish airlines we did go to Frankfurt by bus and the German customs did check the passports and never made any comments. They were so polite not like that arrogant supervisor in Doha airport. And what is more that even after seven weeks from receiving the reference number id from LU for our complaint they still did not answer our follow up enquiries.