The airlines of the Lufthansa Group have reimbursed more than €3.2 billion for 7.3 million passengers so far this year. It says it has less than €300 million in refunds outstanding for around 650,000 transactions.
The airline said: "Constantly changing travel restrictions and warnings force Lufthansa to change flight schedules again and again. This leads to unavoidable flight cancellations. The associated refund applications are processed as quickly as possible. Therefore, the number of open refund applications will continue to develop dynamically, decrease further in the coming weeks, but will not reach zero."
To handle the volume, the airline has quadrupled its capacity in travel agency sales and tripled its capacity in contact centres. Numerous employees from other departments have been activated to provide support and have been released from short-time working in return. Currently, around 1,700 applications per hour can be processed.
All fares of Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian Airlines, and Brussels Airlines can currently be rebooked as often as required without incurring charges.
