Geprüft von Dr. Christopher Wekel
Spezialist für Reiserecht
In this article, we explain under which conditions passengers qualify for a flight delay compensation from Lufthansa. We show exactly when you are entitled to €250, €400, or €600 and how you can claim your rights quickly and easily. Step by step, we explain the most important aspects – from the legal framework to practical tips. For a comprehensive overview, we dedicate a section of the article to each of the following topics:
To find out whether and how much compensation Lufthansa owes you for your specific flight delay, use our compensation calculator – online, free, and with no obligations:
Besides, we provide a quick guide, which summarizes all relevant steps from checking your claim to receiving payment. In detail, we also explain:
Do you have a specific question about your compensation claim against Lufthansa? Take a look at our FAQ section, where we compile frequently asked questions and answers.
First, we offer an overview of how to quickly and effectively receive compensation for delays on Lufthansa flights. With the following three steps, you can promptly obtain your flight compensation:
A right to compensation against Lufthansa exists according to the EU Air Passenger Rights Regulation, provided that:
If these main requirements are met, you usually qualify for a compensation. However, there are some more conditions, even though, ordinarily, they are fulfilled. Most importantly, the delay must have occurred within the last three years, as the claim would otherwise be barred by the German statute of limitations.
The additional requirements for compensation from Lufthansa are as follows:
You must be able to provide proof of a confirmed booking.
You must have actually boarded the delayed flight.
The flight must not have been booked under non-public special conditions.
You must have had your own seat (does not apply to infants).
The delay must not have occurred more than three years ago.
Lufthansa must be solvent at the time the claim is pursued.
Detailed information on all additional prerequisites can be found in the section on further requirements.
For delayed Lufthansa flights, the compensation amount depends on the flight distance. Article 7 of the EU Air Passenger Rights Regulation provides for the following amounts per person: €250 for flights up to 1,500 km, €400 for flights up to 3,500 km, and €600 for longer routes.
However, there are three important exceptions to this basic rule:
Deviations from the general principle of calculating flight delay compensation:
1. Double compensation for two successive disruptions: When your initial flight is canceled and the replacement flight is also significantly delayed.
2. Reduced payment for EU long-haul flights: Compensations are capped at €400 per passenger for flights within the EU.
3. Halved compensation for long-haul flights: Only €300 instead of €600 if the delay does not exceed 4 hours.
All details about these special rules can be found in the corresponding section:
How much compensation you may claim for your flight delay with Lufthansa can also be determined free of charge in our compensation calculator:
How you can most efficiently obtain your compensation from Lufthansa depends on the clarity of your case. Given the mixed payment practices of the airline, the prospects for success vary across different approaches.
In clear cases, such as technical defects without external influence, directly contacting the airline—for example, via email—is often worthwhile. Use our free template for a claim letter for this purpose:
For less straightforward cases, alternative routes are available. You can, for instance, involve the SÖP (conciliation body) or rely on a passenger rights website like ours. While Refund Pilot pays out within 1-3 days, other providers like Airhelp and Flightright are essentially debt-collection companies and only pay after successfully enforcing your claim against Lufthansa. For a more detailed comparison of all your option, check out the dedicated section below.
For passengers protected by a legal expenses insurance without high deductibles, pursuing claims on your own in court can be worthwhile as well. While legal representation requires a few months of time and coordination with a law firm, you retain the chance to receive a the full compensation amount without deductions.
For those without a legal expenses insurance or seeking a faster solution, passenger rights websites like Refund Pilot are the better choice. These operate purely on a success basis and only charge a commission upon successful compensation. As a direct compensator, Refund Pilot offers a particularly efficient solution: a payout within 1-3 days with a quota of 71-75% of the compensation amount after positive verification.
Other passenger rights websites such as Airhelp and Flightright retain higher service fees of 35-50% if successful and only pay after successfully enforcing claims against Lufthansa. Since this often requires filing a lawsuit, it can take several months.
Alternative routes such as resorting to a free conciliation body like the SÖP or submitting a complaint to the Federal Aviation Office are possible as well but have one decisive disadvantage: Unlike a court judgment, they cannot force Lufthansa to pay.
We have compiled all details on the various enforcement routes in the corresponding section:
In this section, you will learn under which conditions you can claim compensation from Lufthansa for your flight delay. We will guide you through all the relevant points:
1. An overview of the key requirements provides you with quick guidance.
We then delve deeper into the individual requirements:
2. When does the EU Passenger Rights Regulation apply to Lufthansa flights (scope of application)?
3. From what delay duration does Lufthansa have to pay?
4. In which cases can Lufthansa invoke extraordinary circumstances?
5. Which additional conditions must be met?
A claim for compensation against Lufthansa arises according to the European Air Passenger Rights Regulation under these main requirements:
1. Your Lufthansa flight falls under the scope of the EU’s regulation no. 261/2004. This is the case for all flights departing from the EU. For departures outside the EU, the regulation applies if the flight lands in the EU. As a European airline, Lufthansa is liable for compensation on all these routes (more details here).
2. The delay upon arrival is at least 3 hours. The decisive factor is the time when the aircraft doors open at the final destination airport. The departure delay or delays at intermediate stops are not relevant (more on calculating the relevant delay here).
3. The delay is not due to extraordinary circumstances. For Lufthansa, these include extreme weather conditions, strikes by airport personnel, or flight bans imposed by authorities. Lufthansa usually does not recognize technical problems as extraordinary circumstances.
In addition to these main requirements, there are some further conditions. At the same time, they are met in most cases. For the sake of completeness, however, you can find a complete overview in the linked section further down in the article.
To quickly and reliably check whether your specific Lufthansa flight entitles you to compensation, you can use our compensation calculator. Usage is free, requires no personal data, and does not obligate you to anything. In just a few minutes, you will receive a well-founded assessment of your case:
Additionally, you can use other providers for a second opinion on your eligibility. Some passenger rights websites like EUclaim offer direct online verifications of compensation claims without prior registration (similar to our own standard). Larger providers such as Flightright or Airhelp, however, require personal data in advance before they present their assessment. If you consider relying on one of those household names, we therefore recommend a comparison of the different providers ahead of time, as services fees of more notorious brands tend to be higher.
Consumer protection groups such as the German ADAC and the European Consumer Centers Network also provide free tools to check your entitlement to a flight delay compensation. However, these only verify whether some of the requirements are met. In particular, forms provided by NGOs and government bodies typically lack an in-depth review using automatic background checks of flight databases to determine whether extraordinary circumstances preclude a right to compensation. In our assessment, this significantly limits the informative value of these tools compared to those of commercial passenger rights websites (which are equally for free).
As an EU-carrier, Lufthansa’s obligation to pay lump-sum compensations for flight delays is governed by the EU Air Passenger Rights Regulation. It applies on nearly all flights operated by the airline. This is because all of Lufthansa’s hubs are located in Germany, right in the heart of Europe. As a result, every Lufthansa flight from or to these hubs falls under the scope of the EU Air Passenger Rights Regulation (Article 3 paragraph 1 lit. a, b Regulation (EC) No. 261/2004). You can read more details about the applicability of the regulation in our general article on compensation for flight delays.
Besides the EU, the regulation also applies in Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway (EEA countries), Great Britain (through the European Union Withdrawal Act 2018), and Switzerland (through decisions of the Joint Air Transport Committee).
For Lufthansa, this means: Flights between these countries also fall under the regulation. A flight from Frankfurt to Zurich or from Munich to London therefore establishes the same rights as a domestic German connection.
For multi-segment flights with Lufthansa, the following applies: If the first flight departs from the EU, there is a claim for compensation even if the delay occurs on a later leg outside Europe (European Court of Justice (ECJ), judgment of 11.07.2019, file no. C-502/18).
However, an important exception exists for flights between two non-EU countries with a transfer in Germany: If a passenger flies from New York via Frankfurt to Istanbul, for instance, case law treats this as a direct flight from USA to Turkey. The EU passenger rights do not apply in this case because the flight is treated as a whole, and neither the original starting point nor the final destination is in the EU.
For delays on an EU feeder flight to the main route, Lufthansa is also liable if this causes a connecting flight outside Europe to be missed (ECJ, judgment of 31.05.2018, file no. C-537/17). So if the Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to London is delayed and travelers miss their connecting flight with British Airways to Tokyo as a result, they are entitled to compensation as well.
Outside the EU, there are hardly any comparable statutory protections of passenger rights. Only Canada (since 2020) and India have codified similar, albeit weaker, compensatory schemes for air travelers. At the same time, US law, for example, does not provide for lump-sum compensation in cases of flight delays.
In this subsection we explain:
a. the general requirements regarding the delay at the final destination,
b. what to do if Lufthansa disputes a significant delay,
c. which special rules for calculating the delay apply to multi-segment flight connections,
d. and what to consider in case of diversions to another destination airport.
According to the Sturgeon decision of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) of November 19, 2009 (file no. C-402/07; C-432/07), a delay of at least three hours at the destination establishes a claim for compensation. The ECJ recognized that serious delays cause comparable disadvantages to cancellations without replacement flights. Therefore, Article 7 of the EU Air Passenger Rights Regulation (EC 261/2004) also applies to significant delays.
The decisive time difference is between the scheduled arrival time and the time when the first cabin door opens at the final destination. This was clarified by the ECJ in its judgment of September 4, 2014 (file no. C-452/13).
Examples for calculation:
It is important that the delay at the final destination is always decisive – regardless of whether you travel on a direct flight or a connecting flight (cf. ECJ, judgment of February 20, 2013, file no. C-11/11).
In practice, there are rarely disputes over obvious delays of more than three hours. Based on experience, such cases are hardly contested by Lufthansa, as corresponding delays are well documented in public flight databases. It becomes more difficult when the arrival delay is close to the three-hour limit. In such cases, the airline – including Lufthansa – will often argue that the relevant delay is below the threshold and therefore no claim exists.
Burden of proof: According to current law, the passenger must prove that the delay was at least 180 minutes. This can be difficult, especially with tight time intervals. Lufthansa could claim, for example, that the first cabin door was opened only 179 minutes after the scheduled arrival. Without reliable evidence, there is a risk of losing the compensation claim.
For Lufthansa passengers, there are various possibilities to document a sufficient delay. These include:
A quick check of the actual arrival time for Lufthansa flights is possible with the compensation calculator from Refund Pilot:
For Lufthansa flights consisting of multiple segments, the total delay at the final destination also counts. Delays on partial routes are only relevant if they cause the passenger to reach the final destination with a delay of at least three hours. A typical example would be a connection from Frankfurt via Munich to New York, where the feeder flight departs late and the connecting flight is missed. The delay at the final destination (New York) is decisive, not the delay at the transfer airport (Munich).
It is also crucial that all segments were booked uniformly with Lufthansa or one of its partners. According to the judgment of the European Court of Justice from July 11, 2019 (case no. C-502/18), it does not matter whether the connecting flight is operated by Lufthansa or another airline from the Star Alliance. Passengers can claim directly from Lufthansa, provided that it is responsible for the first, delayed segment.
Sometimes Lufthansa diverts flights to another airport, for example due to weather problems or night flight restrictions. In such cases, the delay is not calculated based on the arrival at the alternative airport, but on when passengers reach the actual final destination. If Lufthansa provides buses for onward transport, the arrival time at the final destination (the originally booked airport) is considered decisive. This is based on the judgment of the ECJ of April 22, 2021, case no. C-826/19.
An example: A flight scheduled from Hamburg to Munich lands in Nuremberg due to a night flying ban at Munich airport MUC. If Lufthansa then organizes a bus transfer to Munich, the actual arrival time is when the bus opens its doors in Munich.
Not all delays entitle you to compensation. Lufthansa and other airlines may be exempted from liability if extraordinary circumstances cause a flight delay. This is the case if the resulting disruption could not have been avoided even by taking reasonable measures. The respective exception is codified in Article 5, Paragraph 3 of the EU Air Passenger Rights Regulation (EC) No. 261/2004).
The term „extraordinary circumstances“ encompasses situations that are beyond the airline’s control. This includes, for example, extreme weather conditions, strikes by air traffic control, or unexpected airport closures. Such events are beyond Lufthansa’s organizational capabilities. However, European courts have drawn clear boundaries as to when an airline can invoke extraordinary circumstances.
A central example: If the flight schedule is disrupted by a defect on an aircraft, this is fundamentally the responsibility of the airline. In this case, there is a right to compensation. The situation is different with severe weather that prevents regular flight operations. You can read more about this in the section of our general article about the individual grounds for exclusion of flight compensation:
A detailed list of recognized and unrecognized extraordinary circumstances can be found in our article about the individual requirements for flight compensation in detail:
Even if Lufthansa cites extraordinary circumstances, this does not always mean that compensation claims are excluded. According to Article 5, Paragraph 3 of the EU Air Passenger Rights Regulation, the airline remains obligated to take reasonable measures to mitigate delays.
Examples:
If Lufthansa nonetheless fails to take those countermeasures, passengers retain their entitlement to compensation remains even in extraordinary circumstances. You can find more information on this type of cases in our detailed specialized article on the individual requirements for flight compensation:
Good news for Lufthansa passengers: If the three main prerequisites explained above are met, there is usually nothing standing in the way of compensation for a flight delay. The additional legal requirements rarely lead to the exclusion of claims.
Nevertheless, you should also be aware that there are some further conditions, indeed. In some cases, the compensation claim can fail because of them – even if your Lufthansa flight was delayed by more than three hours. The following points must be fulfilled:
a. You have a confirmed booking for the delayed flight and can prove this.
b. You actually showed up for the delayed flight and did not stay away.
c. You booked the flight at a publicly available fare.
d. A separate seat was provided for you.
e. The claims are not yet time-barred.
f. Lufthansa is still solvent when you assert your claim.
At the same time, the reason and circumstances of your travel do not impact your eligibility. This is important for business travelers and passengers on package holidays: The EU Air Passenger Rights Regulation also applies to them. The right to compensation always belongs personally to the passenger – not to the employer or tour operator. This follows from Article 5, 7 Air Passenger Rights Regulation, which universally assigns the right to compensation to the individual passenger.
As an air traveler, you can therefore always claim the compensation yourself from Lufthansa or enforce it in other ways, for example through a passenger rights website, without having to coordinate with your employer or your tour operator.
It may sound self-evident, but – for the sake of completeness – we are mentioning it anyways: You are only eligible for compensation from Lufthansa with a confirmed booking for the delayed flight. This is required by Article 3 Paragraph 2 of the EU Air Passenger Rights Regulation. A booking is considered valid if the airline issued you an itinerary or other evidence proving the acceptance of your booking by Lufthansa.
Mainly two documents can serve as proof:
You should be able to present at least one of these documents when applying for Lufthansa’s compensation. Passenger rights websites also need these documents to verify your claims.
As for the booking confirmation, you usually receive by email immediately after booking. Besides, you can also retrieve it later:
It doesn’t matter whether you booked directly with Lufthansa or through a travel agency. The only important thing is that the airline has confirmed your booking – recognizable by the six-digit booking code or ticket number (starting with Lufthansa’s airline code 220) in your travel documents.
The boarding pass is an equivalent piece of evidence to prove that you were validly booked on a delayed flight. It requires check-in, which in turn is only possible with a confirmed booking. You can typically find the boarding pass:
Please note: The flight must be booked at a public fare. Award flights with miles, discounted tickets, and flights paid with vouchers are not a problem. Only flights at employee rates are excluded.
Yet another requirement to claim a compensatioon is that you must have actually taken the delayed Lufthansa flight. If instead you independently rebook to another flight or completely abandon the trip, you lose your right to compensation. The European Court of Justice justifies this by stating that without travel participation, no travel-related inconveniences can arise, whereas the lump-sum compensation is designated to make up for those.
For connecting flights, however, it is sufficient if you use the delayed Lufthansa flight to the transfer airport. You do not necessarily have to continue to the final destination if you miss your connection there.
The case is different if you do not board the delayed Lufthansa flight at all. Even if you independently find a faster alternative, you are not entitled to delay compensation. This is because compensation is only intended to offset actual inconveniences suffered – and according to case law, these require that you arrive at least three hours later than planned.
Another requirement according to Article 3 of the EU Air Passenger Rights Regulation: You must have booked at a publicly available fare. Most Lufthansa flights automatically fulfill this condition.
Caution is only advised for very last-minute bookings or last-minute rebookings. In such cases, Lufthansa sometimes makes travel subject to availability, such as free seats on board. In such cases, be sure to secure proof of your confirmed booking before departure:
After the flight date, it becomes difficult to prove the booking, as Lufthansa usually blocks online access to the booking data.
The booked fare must be accessible to everyone. You are not entitled to compensation only if you:
All regular bookings, on the other hand, entitle you to compensation – including bargain prices and tickets from frequent flyer programs. The only decisive factor is that theoretically any normal passenger could have booked the fare.
According to Article 3 Paragraph 3 of the EU Air Passenger Rights Regulation, you must have booked your own seat to be eligible for compensation. Now, this does not mean that you need a paid seat reservation. At the same time, it is important that your seat is not assigned to someone else at the same time.
This condition is almost always met for adult Lufthansa passengers. However, the situation is different for infants: If they travel on the lap of their companion, they are not entitled to their own compensation. Minors only have their own claim if a separate seat was booked for them. The German Federal Court of Justice explicitly confirmed this in 2015 (judgment of March 17, 2015, X ZR 35/14).
By the way: There is also no separate delay compensation for traveling animals. Only humans are considered eligible passengers.
You must assert your compensation claims against Lufthansa in time before they become time-barred. As a German carrier, Lufthansa by default follows the German statute of limitation. Accordingly, the standard limitation period of three years applies pursuant to the relevant section 195 of the German Civil Code (BGB). After that, Lufthansa can raise the objection of limitation, and your claims can no longer be enforced.
According to section 199 BGB, the limitation period does not begin on the day of the flight itself, but only at the end of the year in which the flight took place. An example: For a delayed Lufthansa flight from 2024, you have until December 31, 2027, to enforce your claims. It doesn’t matter whether the flight took place in early January or late December 2024.
Fortunataly, unlike some other airlines, Lufthansa has not set a shorter limitation period in its terms and conditions. Hence, the full statutory three-year period applies.
One more practical note: If you want to engage a passenger rights website to enforce your claim, you should not wait until just before the deadline expires. This is because passenger rights companies usually need a few weeks to review your claims and, if necessary, launch court proceedings against Lufthansa.
Besides, there is one more often overlooked practical prerequisite for obtaining a compensation: The airline must be solvent for you to actually receive a payout. Even an existing claim becomes pointless if the airline cannot fulfill it due to imminent or actual insolvency.
Currently, there is no elevated risk of an insolvency of Lufthansa because the airline has been generating healthy profits in recent years. At the same time this scenario should not be dismissed as irrelevant too quickly – especially when contemplating the possibility of a lengthy court proceeding against Lufthansa that may drag out for 6-12 months in Germany. Bear in mind, it was not long ago during the COVID-19 pandemic that Lufthansa would have had to file for bankruptcy in 2020 if it had not been for a bailout by the German government.
Even though the risk seems relatively abstract for now, two scenarios may jeopardize your claim should Lufthansa’s economic outlook deteriorate:
One way to hedge against a potential crunch in Lufthansa’s liquidity is by trading your claim for a compensation in against a direct compensation from a passenger rights website like Refund Pilot. That way you receive a large part of your statutory lump-sum compensation right away as a direct payment (71-75% of the face value of the statutory entitlement in case of Refund Pilot). At the same time, the passenger rights company assumes the risk of not being able to enforce your claim against Lufthansa, whereas customers can keep the payout either way.
In this section, we explain how much compensation Lufthansa must pay for a flight delay when the requirements mentioned above are met.
We will cover:
1. key facts regarding the calculation of compensation amounts;
2. the standard calculation method for compensation on Lufthansa flights;
3. exceptions and special cases where the compensation amount differs from the standard rule.
The EU Air Passenger Rights Regulation defines in Article 7 how much compensation Lufthansa must pay for delays. The amount depends on the flight distance:
However, there are three major exceptions to this standard rule:
To determine the exact compensation amount for your delayed Lufthansa flight, it’s best to use our free compensation calculator:
The EU Air Passenger Rights Regulation defines in Article 7 how much compensation per person is due for delays on Lufthansa flights. The amount depends on the length of the flight route:
For calculating the distance, the straight-line distance between departure and destination airports applies. For connecting flights, the Passenger Rights Regulation’s method does not add up the individual segments. Instead, it measures the direct distance between the first departure point and the final destination. The exact amount for your flight route can be determined free of charge using our compensation calculator:
The amounts mentioned are due to each passenger individually. A passenger can also claim compensation for their travel companions from the same booking. Lufthansa accepts such collective claims. However, just as with requests for a flight compensation for a single traveler, Lufthansa’s readiness to grant these lump-sum payments in our experience is mixed.
The amount of compensation from Lufthansa doesn’t always follow only the standard rule described above from Article 7 paragraph 1 of the EU Air Passenger Rights Regulation. There are three important exceptions you should know about.
One of these exceptions doubles the claim in cases of multiple flight problems. The other two lead to lower compensations on long-haul routes. Let’s look at these cases in detail:
The European Court of Justice has ruled: If a Lufthansa flight is cancelled and the replacement flight is delayed by more than three hours, passengers are entitled to double compensation – one for the cancellation and one for the delay (ECJ, Judgment of 12.03.2020, Case C-832/18).
Two requirements must be met for this:
A flight cancellation occurs when Lufthansa completely cancels the original flight. You can recognize this by:
Simply rescheduling to the next day while keeping the same flight number only counts as a delay. Particularly important for double compensation: Lufthansa must have formally rebooked you onto the replacement flight.
Please note: A mere standby boarding pass is not sufficient. You need a written rebooking confirmation with the new, scheduled flight times. Only then can you claim the second compensation if there is another delay. This because only then does the EU’s Air Passenger Rights Regulation consider the incident a separate second flight disruption rather than just a deepening of the first one.
For long-haul flights of 3,500 km or more, Lufthansa doesn’t always pay the full €600. If the delay is between three and four hours, the compensation is reduced to €300 (Article 7 paragraph 2 Regulation (EC) No. 261/2004).
Another exception applies to long-haul flights within the EU. Even if these exceed 3,500 km, Lufthansa pays a maximum of €400 instead of €600 (Article 7 paragraph 1 (b) Regulation (EC) No. 261/2004).
This rule applies to flights from Germany to the Canary Islands and Madeira, for example. The EU legislator justifies the respective specialty with the simpler entry and exit procedures within Europe, which make delays less burdensome than on intercontinental flights.
In this section, we show how you can receive compensation for delays on Lufthansa flights. We compare different approaches and demonstrate which method offers the best chances of success.
First, we’ll look at:
1. an overview of various ways for claiming compensation.
Then we will discuss:
2. Lufthansa’s reaction to compensation claims;
3. tips for pursuing your claim on your own;
4. when using a passenger rights website like Refund Pilot is worthwhile.
5. which other alternatives like hiring a lawyer and tapping dispute resolution bodies might be suitable for you.
The best approach to obtaining your compensation from Lufthansa depends critically on how clearly you are entitled to compensation. Central to this are the length of the arrival delay and whether the cause of the delay is known and clearly attributable to the airline.
These factors are particularly important since Lufthansa shows limited and is most likely to compensate in cases where the claim situation is clear. We have compiled details on this in our analysis of Lufthansa’s payment behavior.
You have particularly good chances of success in clear cases with delays well over four hours. These should be based on circumstances that were controllable for Lufthansa, such as:
This makes it highly unlikely that the airline can be relieved of its obligation to pay compensation due to force majeure.
If you’re unsure whether you’re entitled to compensation in your case, we recommend a free check using our compensation calculator:
In such cases, you can often claim compensation yourself with reasonable time investment. The attempt is worthwhile for many passengers given the favorable ratio of effort to chance of success. Often, a precise message explaining your incident and your legal request via Lufthansa’s online form or an email to customer service is sufficient.
To save time preparing your request, you can use our free claim letter template as a drafting aid.
In less clear-cut cases, Lufthansa is, based on experience, rarely willing to voluntarily provide compensation. This applies to case scenarios with the following characteristics:
To efficiently pursue your claim despite these challenges, it makes sense to first verify whether you’re entitled to compensation at all. Only then can you properly assess Lufthansa’s negative response to a compensation request. Our compensation calculator provides a quick evaluation of your chances of success regarding your compensation claim, free of charge:
If your claim is confirmed, the next step is to weigh the different alternatives for enforcing your right to compensation. From our experience, even in such difficult cases, you can try to directly demand compensation from Lufthansa for the flight delay. However, if they refuse or don’t respond, or if you want to avoid a request with little chance of success, you should consider other ways to obtain compensation.
You essentially have three options, which we would like to briefly outline:
1. Using a passenger rights website:
2. Filing a lawsuit yourself (more on this):
3. Contacting a dispute resolution body (more on this):
Details on the different approaches can be found in the linked subsections.
Lufthansa’s payment behavior regarding compensation claims proves to be very mixed. Published customer experiences reveal – as of March 20, 2025 – an inconsistent picture.
In some cases, Lufthansa pays quickly and without complications. For example, one passenger reports on Trustpilot about receiving compensation within just three days after online submission for a six-hour delay. According to his experience report on Tripadvisor, another passenger received compensation and reimbursement of expenses within four days after a cancellation and 30-hour delay.
However, customers more frequently describe negative experiences with their attempts to claim compensation from Lufthansa. Typical problem patterns are:
This is evidenced by numerous critical customer reports from 2024 and 2025 on the review sites Trustpilot and Tripadvisor. Some examples:
A passenger reported on Trustpilot in January 2025 about her experience from the Dominican Republic: Her flight was canceled and only operated three days later. After more than a year, she is still waiting for her compensation. Her inquiries remain unanswered. Especially on her frequently traveled holiday route, a rebooking would have been obvious to shorten the waiting time. If an airline like Lufthansa does not take such reasonable countermeasures and the journey is delayed by three days, a compensation claim is likely regardless of the cause of the flight disruption.
A German traveler described on Tripadvisor at the end of November 2024 his „horror trip“ from Düsseldorf to Singapore in July 2024. After an unplanned overnight stay at the airport, he has still not received any compensation despite a one-day delay. Particularly for such drastic flight connections, rebookings should be considered to reduce the delay. Even if force majeure causes a flight delay, there is regularly a claim for flight compensation.
A particularly illustrative case was further documented on Trustpilot in September 2024: On a flight from Split to Frankfurt, passengers experienced a 17-hour delay. They received neither information nor support at the airport and had to arrange hotel and transportation themselves at night. Despite multiple requests, Lufthansa also refused any compensation here.
A Swiss customer reported on Tripadvisor in early November 2024 about his canceled flight from Riga to Zurich in August 2024. After months of waiting and no responses from Lufthansa customer service, he felt compelled to engage a lawyer.
A German passenger documented a complex case on Tripadvisor in March 2024: After the last-minute cancellation of his flight in April 2023, a six-month dispute followed with changing justifications from Lufthansa. Only after involving the dispute resolution body was an agreement reached for €250 – however, only €93.87 was paid out.
The customer reviews show: Many passengers only receive their compensation after involving a passenger rights website, a lawyer, or launching ADR proceedings (for instance in front of the German Conciliation Body for Public Transport).
In this respect, the impression arises that Lufthansa not only rejects unjustified compensation claims but also quite often legitimate ones. At least as long as these are not pursued through arbitration or even in court. To avoid being wrongfully dismissed, it is therefore worthwhile before confronting the airline to get an independent assessment of whether there is a claim for flight compensation. This is possible free of charge with our compensation calculator:
If you want to pursue your claims against Lufthansa yourself, we support you with specific recommendations for action. We’ll explain:
Before investing time in pursuing a claim independently, you should clarify two central preliminary questions to estimate your chances of success:
You can quickly clarify the first question with our free compensation calculator:
Registration is not necessary for this. We have also summarized the basic requirements for a compensation claim in the linked section.
Regarding the second question: As shown in the section on payment behavior, Lufthansa demonstrates mixed payment behavior. This means for your strategy:
In clear-cut cases, trying independently with our free template letter is often worthwhile. These include in particular:
In more complex cases or unclear causes of your Lufthansa flight delay, you should consider the time investment. Here, enforcing claims by yourself often requires:
In such cases, support from a passenger rights website is advisable, especially when:
What is the best way to receive compensation from Lufthansa if you want to try on your own? Based on our experience and reports from many passengers, six central rules have proven effective:
1. Don’t send inquiries by mail;
2. Primarily use the online form;
3. Choose email as an alternative;
4. Use a template for your claim letter;
5. Stay in the same channel for follow-up messages;
6. After another dunning letter, consider different approaches.
Let’s look at these points in detail:
Mailing an actual letter to Lufthansa’s headquarters may seem like the most obvious way to lend gravity to your request – in practice, however, this method slows down processing without achieving priority treatment by Lufthansa. There are several reasons for this effect:
In the end, your letter will end up as a digital copy in the inbox of Lufthansa’s customer service anyways. It just takes longer to arrive there. Hence, our tip: Save yourself the postage.
The online form from Lufthansa is, in our experience, alongside with email contact, the most efficient way to approach the airline with a request. Its advantages are clear:
As an alternative to the contact form, you can also use the email address imprint@lufthansa.com. Judging by our experience, Lufthansa responds to inquiries through this channel about as fast as when you submit feedback through the form on its website. At the same time, email offers the advantage that you can quickly copy&paste a pre-prepared dunning letter and send without technical inhibitions. If you use our free claim letter generator for this, requesting compensation by email is the fastest.
Even if you don’t use our template letter to make contact, you should pay attention to the following in your email to accelerate a prompt response from Lufthansa:
When preparing your request to Lufthansa, consider using our free template for a claim letter to save work:
The template offers several advantages:
When responses are lacking, simply picking up the phone is tempting. Often, however, this proves to be counterproductive when you try to bring Lufthansa to compensate you for your flight delay.
Its hotline is often overcrowded, so expect long waiting times. Moreover, customer support employees answering calls regularly refer to the ongoing review and have no authority to override this and approve the compensation themselves. Usually, they are limited to verbal promises to forward payment reminders and these are not necessarily kept.
Therefore, our tip if you want to follow up: Stay in the original communication channel (online form or email) instead.
If Lufthansa does not respond to a dunning letter or only sends standard responses, you should take a different approach. An endless correspondence with the airline rarely leads to the desired result based on experience.
In such cases, three better alternatives should be considered:
While independently enforcing passenger rights against Lufthansa requires some effort, it is facilitated by helpful free online tools. From our experience, there are two that have proven particularly useful:
1. Online calculators for checking your eligibility for flight delay compensation.
2. Professional claim letter templates.
To quickly and freely check whether you are entitled to compensation and how much it would be, use our compensation calculator:
Refund Pilot’s compensation calculator offers the following advantages:
Alternative tools are offered by NGOs such as the ADAC and the Consumer Centre NRW. However, these online forms tend to be less comprehensive because they:
For the specific request for compensation from Lufthansa, we provide you with a free template for a dunning letter:
Our claim letter template offers several advantages:
The last point in particular provides significant work relief: The letter concentrates on the essential information that Lufthansa needs for processing – especially the booking code. This allows the airline to directly access all relevant details about the problem flight in their system. Thus, when customizing the template letter, you don’t need to search for and enter any superfluous case data.
As an alternative to enforcing your right to compensation by yourself, you can also assert your claims against Lufthansa through a passenger rights website. In this case, a specialized service provider takes over the complete handling for you.
In Germany alone, there are several dozen passenger rights portals, even though many often only know Flightright as the largest provider. They all resemble each other in their service regarding the basic functionality. In order for you to receive your flight delay compensation, passenger rights portals …
But the similarities end here already. Passenger rights companies price their services quite differently, make payouts at different times, and also vary in customer satisfaction. Because there are so many different passenger rights websites to choose from, we advise consumers to compare the available alternatives.
For better understanding, a central distinction is important first: Passenger rights companies are divided into two groups that pursue different business models:
1. Direct compensators like Refund Pilot:
2. Debt collection agencies like Flightright and Airhelp:
In order to compare those different companies, we have compiled detailed information on:
in a separate article. There you’ll find a comprehensive, neutral comparison of the conditions of all major passenger rights websites, not just Refund Pilot. To keep the presentation as objective as possible, we have limited ourselves to concisely presenting the figures, data, and facts on costs, payout duration, and customer satisfaction without commenting on them.
We also recommend the comparisons of Refund Pilot, Flightright, etc. through independent reviews. For example, at test.de, Qamqam, and Finanztip. It’s also worth looking at the customer reviews of the various passenger rights helpers on Trustpilot.
If you neither want to directly demand your compensation from Lufthansa personally nor engage a passenger rights portal after a flight delay, you still have three other options:
Let’s look at all three alternatives in sequence:
If Lufthansa remains inactive even after your dunning letter and you do not want to use a passenger rights website, you can take legal action yourself instead.
How much work you have to invest into your case heavily depends on whether you hire a lawyer. If you do, this substantially reduces your own workload, even though you certainly still need to allocate some time to selecting an briefing your attorney of choice. Besides, hiring a lawyer increases the cost risk of the proceedings as you can only recover expenses for your lawyer’s fees if you win in court.
Overall, the risk and cost structure of filing a lawsuit essentially depends on whether you have taken out an insurance that covers your legal expenses.
With legal expenses insurance:
Without legal expenses insurance:
A free and proven alternative is mediation by the Conciliation Body for Public Transport (SÖP). Lufthansa takes part in respective alternative dispute resolution procedures and at least recognizes some proposals by the mediator.
At the same time, undergoing a mediation is free for consumers and no legal representation is required. A mediation can be launched online and typically takes a few months until the mediator makes a proposal. Please not, however, that the latter is not binding for Lufthansa (unlike a court ruling).
So even if you manage to convince a mediator that you are entitled to a compensation, there is no guarantee that Lufthansa will actually pay it without having to file an actual lawsuit.
Moreover, there are a few important requirements that must be met before you can open a mediation case:
If these conditions are fulfilled, you can conveniently submit the conciliation request online.
If you decide against all other approaches, you can build additional pressure through two more channels – either through authorities or social media:
The German Federal Aviation Office (LBA) is the responsible supervisory authority for Lufthansa. In this capacity, it also accepts complaints about delays or unjustly refused compensations.
However, before submitting a complaint, you should know the following:
While many companies react sensitively to public criticism, Lufthansa largely remains unimpressed:
If you still want to express public criticism, you should:
Otherwise, in unfavorable cases, you may even face disciplinary measures on the respective platform where you share your experience report due to violations of community rules.
With our free form, you can create a customized template letter to claim your compensation from Lufthansa. After filling in the fields, you will receive an email with a template letter tailored to your case, along with instructions for use and the correct contact details for submission to Lufthansa.
We automatically generate the letter in German, which in our experience is processed fastest by Lufthansa’s customer support.
Important tip: Before sending the template letter, we recommend using our free compensation calculator to verify that you are entitled to compensation. The check takes only a few minutes, is anonymous, and gives you clarity about your chances of success.
For using our template, you have two options: Either fill in all fields in the form directly and receive a fully personalized letter. Or leave the fields blank and first receive a blank template from us by email, in which you can enter your data yourself later.
You can find Lufthansa’s compensation form on their official website under „Help and Contact.“ For faster processing, consider using our template letter and submit it through Lufthansa’s online feedback form.
Lufthansa follows EU Regulation 261/2004, offering compensation of €250-600 based on flight distance when delays exceed 3 hours and aren’t caused by extraordinary circumstances. Their payment behavior is mixed, with some claims settled quickly while others require persistence or third-party help.
Our free compensation calculator provides an accurate assessment of your entitlement from Lufthansa, checking flight data, weather conditions, and potential extraordinary circumstances automatically without requiring personal data.
Compensation amounts depend on flight distance: €250 for flights up to 1,500 km, €400 for flights between 1,500-3,500 km, and €600 for flights over 3,500 km. For long-haul flights with delays between 3-4 hours, compensation is reduced to €300. Check your specific amount using our calculator.
Yes, Lufthansa does pay compensation for delayed flights when legally required, but their approach varies. They tend to pay promptly for clear-cut cases with delays over 4 hours caused by technical issues, but may resist claims involving weather conditions or other potentially extraordinary circumstances.
You’re entitled to compensation from Lufthansa when your flight arrives at least 3 hours late at the final destination. For long-haul flights over 3,500 km with delays between 3-4 hours, you’ll receive €300 instead of €600. No compensation is due for delays under 3 hours.
This article was written by Laura Held on March 20, 2025. She has been an employee at Refund Pilot since 2021 and regularly supports the online editorial team with articles on passenger rights. As a frequent traveler, she knows the challenges of flight delays from personal experience and understands what matters when enforcing compensation claims.
The legal review of the article was conducted by Dr. Christopher Wekel. As an attorney practicing at law firm Pale Bridge in Hamburg, he advises Refund Pilot on travel law issues. He continuously evaluates current case law on passenger rights for the portal and regularly prepares expert opinions in this field.