Mileage Run - Jan 2026 - Chapter 03

Lufthansa is really showing me today, very clearly, everything that’s going wrong there.

After I canceled one AMM ticket yesterday, I tried several times to rebook my second ticket to move all flights one day earlier. On every single call to the SEN hotline, I was told that a rebooking wasn’t possible because the old times (4:40 pm instead of 9:00 am) were still in the system for the FRA–AMM flight.

When I made another attempt shortly before midnight, the friendly agent on the hotline said that the issue was known and that she would simply process the rebooking using the old time. Ticketing would then adjust it accordingly. I was skeptical, but after multiple calls with the hotline, I really didn’t feel like arguing any further.

Specifically, I wanted to book the following connections:

JAN 18 LH 1757 ATH–MUC 06:35–08:10
JAN 18 LH 109 MUC–FRA 17:00–18:00
JAN 19 LH 462 FRA–AMM 16:40–22:55 – new: 09:00–15:15

Of course, the tickets hadn’t been issued this morning. “Okay,” I thought, “give ticketing a bit more time.” So I first took the bus into Athens city center and did a hop-on hop-off tour along the coast.

I then had lunch at the rooftop restaurant Public, with a fantastic view of Syntagma Square.

Since my tickets still hadn’t been confirmed, I decided to try my luck with the SEN hotline once again. The agent said everything was fine and that the tickets should be issued shortly. After I repeatedly pointed out that FRA–AMM would be the problem and that I didn’t believe the tickets could be issued like this, he kindly asked his supervisor. After 10 minutes, I was told that I had been right after all and that the ticket couldn’t be issued. Silence. When I asked for the reason, he simply said it was due to the guidelines. I asked which guidelines, but once again the only answer I got was “guidelines.”

Totally annoyed, I went back to the hotel and tried again. After five minutes, HUACU, because I immediately realized this wasn’t going anywhere either. On the next call, I finally reached a friendly agent who calmly listened to the whole issue. She immediately said she needed to talk to her supervisor. Hopefully not the same one as at lunchtime, I thought. After a while, she came back with helpful information, and the problem could then be resolved fairly quickly.

For whatever reason, Lufthansa only had the updated departure times for FRA–AMM–FRA in the system for the very next day. For all subsequent days—even those already confirmed as schedule-change days—the old times are still there.

So basically for my case it means:

If I want to fly to AMM on January 19, the FRA–AMM flight has to be booked for January 18 at 4:40 pm so that it is then automatically changed to January 19 at 9:00 am the next day. However, since my arrival in FRA from MUC is only at 6:00 pm, the ticket cannot be issued—even though the actual departure doesn’t take place until a day later. To solve the problem, I therefore need to arrive in FRA, also having the minimum connection time (MCT) in mind, no later than 3:25 pm. After we adjusted the MUC–FRA flight accordingly, with arrival in FRA now at 3:00 pm, the ticket was issued within 15 minutes. The agent even stayed on the line with me until ticketing had processed the request. She was confident the issuance would happen within 10 minutes.

This whole drama once again shows just how wildly different the competence levels of the hotline agents are—and how broken Lufthansa’s IT really is. I can’t imagine that the issue with the unchanged departure times is intentional.

The tickets for ATH–MUC–FRA–AMM are now all in my wallet, and I’m hoping the actual run can finally start tomorrow in a relaxed way—even though I unfortunately had to cancel one ticket.