As many of you travel frequently I would like to share my experience with Lufthansa. We have booked flights to Denmark in April 2011 and to our surprise Lufthansa changed their allowance on June 1st. Unfortunately they did not follow what other airlines do, because the allowance is linked to the booking day and not the day you fly.

The general change had a huge impact on our experience because we're used to good service and never had problems with our luggage and excess weight. We usually always fly KLM but couldn't get tickets so we were more or less forced to use Lufthansa. Now with KLM you get 23 kg of allowance and if you bring an extra 23 kg suitcase it will set you back Euro 45,- (you get a discount from the regular 55,- if you check in online!). With Lufthansa we got 20 kg and had to pay Euro 30,- pr. kilo of excess luggage all because of the booking date.

Please be aware of the change as of June 1st. The Lufthansa website is pretty confusing and has not been properly edited for a long time. You can find information as far back as 2001 in the allowance section and on the same page you can find both 20 kg and 23 kg mentioned. Calling their service/support won't do you any good because it has been outsourced to India and they won't connect you to a manager. Contacting Lufthansa through their website in English and German gave very little response. The English reply told us to look at the website (call scripting) and we never got a response on the German complaint.

A quick overview of the rules:

If you have booked a ticked before June 1st 2011 you are allowed to bring 20 kg of luggage plus your cabin bag. Excess luggage will be charged at Euro 30,- / kg.

If you have booked after June 1st you are allowed to bring 23 kg of luggage plus your cabin bag. Excess luggage in a suitcase of up to 23 kg will be charged at Euro 55,-.

We unfortunately booked tickets for Christmas so we're going to have the same problem once again.

The most funny part of the story is that Lufthansa lost one of our suitcases going back to Shanghai. We did finally get it back but it was damaged :-)