1

Later this year, my girlfriend and I will be flying with Lufthansa on a transatlantic flight. To keep this question as generic as possible, let's call the itinerary A-FRA-C, with A (and FRA, of course) being within the Schengen area and C obviously being outside Schengen. Our ticket includes both legs (and the return flights) and it includes both me and my girlfriend.

AFAIK, with Lufthansa, you can check-in online 23 hours before the flight, which is also when you can pick a seat for free. My questions are:

  1. Will we able to check in both of us at the same time (as in, with one login to the web form), making sure we can get seats next to each other?
  2. Will we be able to check in to our second leg 23 hours before the scheduled departure of the first leg, or do we have to check in twice?

I'm especially interested in the answer to the second question (both for personal reasons and in general, since this would give passengers with a feeder flight an advantage when it comes to picking a "good" seat compared to passengers flying directly from a hub).

Improve this question

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
5

You check in for both legs at once, within 23 hours of your first departure.

All passengers on the same reservation can check in at once.

Small correction: you are probably on the same reservation but you have separate tickets. This will be reflected in two distinct e-ticket numbers.

Improve this answer
5
  • 1
    For clarity, that you have one reservation but technically two tickets is perfectly normal and nothing you should have the slightest concern over. In fact, pretend you don't even know :)
    – Johns-305
    Sep 23, 2017 at 13:54
  • Yep, we do indeed have one reservation (six-character booking code), but two different "etix" numbers. Thanks for your answer!
    – TheWolf
    Sep 23, 2017 at 14:06
  • I can confirm that this is correct based on my own experience a couple of months ago. We had flights LHR-MUC-TBS with five people (2 adults and 3 children) on one booking - and could check in all of us 23 hours before the first departure.
    – Aleks G
    Sep 23, 2017 at 18:41
  • Separately, I can confirm that Lufthansa's online check in process is horrendously slow and user-unfriendly even for one traveller; when there are multiple travellers involved, it's much worse. On our return flights, I didn't manage to complete the whole thing and just ignored it all and went to the airport to check in there.
    – Aleks G
    Sep 23, 2017 at 18:43
  • @AleksG I've also had trouble with their online check-in, and TAP even had trouble once checking my wife in for her second leg of a TAP/Lufthansa itinerary after I tried to check her in online. I always forget that if you indicate that you're a resident but not a citizen of the US then they require a green card number and prevent you from changing the answer to "are you a resident of the US." My wife lives in the US but has no green card. I suppose this stems from their developers not understanding the differences between US green cards and German residence permits.
    – phoog
    Sep 24, 2017 at 16:33
2

If your booking is on one ticket (which you imply), at the check-in time for the first flight, you can check-in for all the flights, and will get all the boarding passes (you actually cannot check in only for the first leg, they only offer all together).

Note that there might be reasons why - even though you can check in online and pick your seats - you will not get a boarding pass to print (or electronically), because of the target country, visa regulations, etc. In that case, you will get your boarding passes only at the airport, when they have physically verified your passports/visas/etc.

Improve this answer
0

I've flown multi-leg flights with several airlines, including Lufthansa. None of them has ever made me check in for the different legs separately: it's always been that you check in for the whole journey as soon as check-in for the first leg opens.

Improve this answer
2
  • Just because I recently experienced it: Air India does actually make you check-in separately. As in, for each leg, the check-in opens 48 hours before departure.
    – TheWolf
    Nov 4, 2018 at 17:30
  • @TheWolf How bizarre. And inconvenient.
    – David Richerby
    Nov 4, 2018 at 17:32

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.