How to Fill Out the Lufthansa Compensation Form: Sections and Deadlines

To fill out the Lufthansa compensation form, open the “Compensation in the event of flight irregularities” page on Lufthansa’s website (or reach it through Help and Contact from the homepage), then work through six sections: the type of irregularity, who you’re filing for, flight details, personal and payment information, receipts, and a final confirmation.¹ The whole thing takes about ten minutes if your documents are ready, and it costs nothing to submit. Payouts under EU Regulation 261/2004 run from €250 to €600 per passenger.

Gather Everything Before You Open the Form

Sessions can time out, and reconstructing a half-entered claim is tedious. Pull these together first:

Your booking reference — the six-character alphanumeric code (sometimes called a PNR) on your booking confirmation or e-ticket.
The flight number (LH-prefixed for Lufthansa-operated flights) and travel date. For itineraries with connections, have every leg.
Passenger names spelled exactly as they appear on the documents used to book.
Your IBAN and BIC (or SWIFT code) for the wire transfer.
Supporting documents: boarding passes, rebooking confirmations, and any receipts for meals, hotels, or transport you paid for during the disruption. The form accepts PDF, JPEG, and PNG files up to 3.7 MB each.¹

Section One: Irregularity Type and Who You’re Filing For

The first dropdown asks what went wrong. Options include delayed flight, flight cancellation, diverted flight, missed connecting flight, denied boarding, and downgrade.¹ Pick the one that matches your situation. A subtle but important point: if your first leg was delayed and you missed a connection because of it, select “missed connecting flight” rather than “delayed flight.” That choice tells Lufthansa to evaluate your arrival time at the final destination, which is what the compensation calculation turns on.

Then indicate who you’re filing for. You have three options: yourself only, yourself with family members in the same household, or a third-party filing for someone else. The family option lets you file one claim for everyone traveling together on the same booking, with a single bank account for the combined payment. A third-party filing needs a signed authorization from the traveler; Lufthansa provides a downloadable template on the form page itself.¹

Section Two: Flight Details

Enter the operating airline, the flight number, and the departure and arrival airports for each segment. Operating airline can differ from the airline that sold you the ticket — a codeshare marketed by Lufthansa but flown by Swiss uses the LX code, and that’s the code the form wants. The form supports up to five segments, so you can enter an entire multi-leg journey.

You’ll also indicate how you ultimately completed the journey: on the originally booked flight, on a rebooked flight, by other transport, or not at all if the trip was interrupted.

Section Three: Personal Details and Payment

Enter your name, contact details, and the details of every passenger included in the claim. Use an email address you check regularly — all correspondence about the claim goes there.

For payment, pick your currency and enter your banking details. Lufthansa supports EUR, USD, GBP, CHF, and others. Check the IBAN twice. A single transposed digit will hold up payment for weeks while customer service tries to trace where it went.

Section Four: Receipts and Expenses

Upload receipts for out-of-pocket costs the disruption caused: meals, hotel stays, ground transport, phone calls. These reimbursements are separate from the flat-rate compensation and stack on top of it. If you have no receipts, submit anyway — you can still claim the statutory amount on its own.

Section Five: Confirm and Submit

Before you submit, confirm that the information is accurate and acknowledge the data protection terms. After you click submit, the system generates a reference number that Lufthansa calls a Feedback ID. Save it immediately. Screenshot the confirmation page and check your inbox for a copy. Any follow-up will reference that ID.

Filing for Family Members, Third Parties, and Children

Selecting the “for me and my family in the same household” option lets one person file for the whole household on a single booking. Enter each traveler’s details and the combined compensation can be paid into one account.

Filing for adults outside your household is different. Each traveler either submits their own claim or provides you a signed authorization. Lufthansa’s downloadable template goes in the attachments section along with the rest of your documents.¹ Without it, Lufthansa won’t discuss another adult’s claim with you or route their payment to your account.

Children who traveled on a paid fare are entitled to the same amounts as adults. A parent or legal guardian files on the child’s behalf. If your last name differs from the child’s, upload documentation of the relationship in the attachments section.

What the Form Will Award

The amounts are fixed by distance to your final destination, not by ticket price:²

€250 for flights of 1,500 km or less.
€400 for intra-EU flights over 1,500 km, and for other flights between 1,500 and 3,500 km.
€600 for all other flights over 3,500 km.

Compensation for delays applies when you reach your final destination three or more hours late. For cancellations, you’re owed compensation unless Lufthansa notified you at least 14 days in advance, with narrower notice windows also possible when acceptable re-routing was offered.² If Lufthansa re-routed you and you landed only slightly late, the flat amount may be halved.

One boundary worth knowing: EU 261 covers flights within the EU on any airline, flights departing an EU airport on any airline, and flights arriving in the EU on an EU-based carrier like Lufthansa.³ Lufthansa-operated flights from non-EU countries into the EU are covered because Lufthansa is a German carrier. And if your disruption stemmed from something genuinely outside the airline’s control — severe weather, air traffic control decisions, security issues, certain strikes — Lufthansa can decline compensation on “extraordinary circumstances” grounds.²

What Happens After You Submit

Lufthansa’s passenger rights page states that if you haven’t received a reply within two months you can escalate to an arbitration body.⁴ Two months is a reasonable expectation for how long the review takes. Big disruption events — a storm system across Europe, a strike, an IT outage — can push response times longer.

An approval email confirms the amount and may ask you to verify your bank details once more. Wire transfer usually arrives within a few weeks. A denial email should explain the reason, most often either an extraordinary-circumstances defense or a finding that your delay was under three hours.

How Long You Have to File

Under German law, which governs Lufthansa as a German carrier, you have three years to file. The limitation period doesn’t run from the flight date; it runs from the end of the calendar year in which the disruption occurred. A March 2024 disruption has a limitation period starting December 31, 2024 and ending December 31, 2027. Filing sooner is still better: the airline’s records are fresh, and your boarding passes and receipts are easier to find. If you’d rather not use the online form, Lufthansa accepts claims by post as well.⁴

1
Lufthansa. Application for compensation in the event of flight irregularities
2
EUR-Lex. Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council
3
Your Europe. Air passenger rights
4
Lufthansa. Passenger rights