I’m going to start at the beginning, which, as I’ve heard, is a very good place to start.
I’d been planning my wife Sharon’s milestone birthday trip for months. And while she’s never been someone who cares which airplane we fly to get somewhere, I still wanted this trip to feel special. That meant doing more than just finding the easiest way to get to Hamburg, the first stop on our itinerary.
Using award search tools like point.me and PointsYeah, I managed to find Lufthansa business class award seats on the airline’s Airbus A380 from Washington Dulles to Munich, along with a connecting Eurowings flight to Hamburg, all booked through Aeroplan.
Even better, I managed to find four business class seats so our friends could join us on the trip. While we were flying from Orlando, they were traveling from Atlanta, so we each booked positioning flights to Washington Dulles on United.
The Strike Announcement Changes Everything
Our flights were scheduled for April 15. Then, on April 13, Lufthansa’s cabin crew union announced a strike for April 15 and 16, on top of the pilots’ strike that had already taken place on April 13 and 14.
So while I’ve written posts about what to do when your flight gets canceled, it feels very different when it’s your own trip falling apart less than 48 hours before departure—especially when you’ve already planned a multi-week itinerary involving trains, flights, rental cars, hotels, and everything else.
Trying To Figure Out A New Plan
My first thought was to see what Lufthansa could do. Their email said they would try to operate as many flights as possible and re-accommodate passengers on partner airlines within the Lufthansa Group. Maybe we could end up on Swiss, Austrian, or Brussels Airlines instead.
The problem was that there weren’t many options that would actually get us to Hamburg. I was fine with the idea of flying somewhere nearby and figuring out the rest ourselves, but even those alternatives were disappearing quickly.
And because so many passengers were affected—and the strike disruptions had already been going on for days—it was almost impossible to contact Lufthansa.
The app’s automatic re-booking tool wouldn’t work because our flight was still more than 24 hours away. When we tried contacting an agent, the system warned that wait times were more than two hours and wouldn’t even let us join the queue.
So what do you do in a situation like this?
I followed my own advice and started looking for alternatives. Since I’d booked the flights through Air Canada Aeroplan, I searched for award availability on Star Alliance airlines—and any other Aeroplan partners that might get us somewhere in Europe. At this point, I’d completely given up on the idea of lie-flat business class seats. We just needed a way to get there.
Finding A Backup Flight
A quick search showed saver-level economy seats available on a United flight from Washington Dulles to Frankfurt departing at almost the exact same time as our original Lufthansa flight to Munich.
That was a huge relief because it meant we wouldn’t need to change our positioning flights to Dulles.
Rebooking Through Aeroplan
The only problem was actually getting the tickets changed.
I tried calling Aeroplan on the evening of April 13, but the hold times were so long the system wouldn’t even connect me to the queue. So I went to bed hoping those seats would still be there the next morning.
At 6 a.m. Eastern, I called again.
After waiting on hold for more than an hour, I finally reached an agent. Thankfully, Aeroplan phone reps are usually very knowledgeable. I explained the situation and told her that while I knew getting to Hamburg would be difficult, I’d found economy seats on United to Frankfurt that we’d gladly take.
The only complication involved the tickets I’d booked for our friends, since changes required their approval. Fortunately, that was easy enough to handle with a three-way phone call.
Then came one final issue.
We had originally booked business class seats but would now be flying in economy. The agent explained that while she could rebook the flights, she wouldn’t be able to immediately refund the difference in points and taxes. Instead, after completing the trip, I’d need to send Aeroplan copies of our boarding passes showing we flew in economy. Once they reviewed everything, we’d receive a refund for the difference in miles and taxes—although she warned it could take several weeks.
Getting To Hamburg The Hard Way
Now we still had the additional expense of getting from Frankfurt to Hamburg, which meant booking a five-hour train ride across Germany.
Fortunately, all of us had travel insurance, so we submitted claims for the added transportation costs. At the time, though, I wasn’t even thinking about EU passenger compensation rules. Since Lufthansa canceled our flight with less than 48 hours’ notice, we’re also looking into filing an EU261 compensation claim for the disruption.
All of those claims are still in process, and I’ll provide updates once everything is resolved.
Making The Best Of Economy
To make the replacement flight a little more comfortable, we paid extra for United Economy Plus seats. At roughly $150–$200 per seat, it wasn’t cheap, but for an 8–9 hour overnight flight to Germany, we felt the extra legroom would be worth it.
So despite one of the most stressful 24-hour stretches of trip planning I can remember, I still managed to get us to Germany and into Hamburg only a few hours later than originally planned—even if the journey looked nothing like the one I’d spent months putting together.
Of course, travel wasn’t quite finished testing us yet.
Even after successfully rebooking everything, our replacement flight ended up having problems of its own, and we still didn’t arrive in Germany the way we planned.
But that’s a story for Part 2.
Final Thought
When people talk about award travel, they usually focus on the glamorous side—the lie-flat seats, luxury hotels, and aspirational redemptions. But trips don’t always go according to plan, and sometimes the real value of points and miles comes from having flexibility when things fall apart.
In this case, having transferable points, access to partner airlines, and a little knowledge about how these systems work helped save a trip that easily could have unraveled completely.
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