This seems like an exceedingly poorly handled situation, especially when you consider that this happened at a hub (thanks to tv for flagging this)…
In this post:
Lufthansa cancels flight, but won’t let passengers off plane
This incident happened on Thursday, February 19, 2026, and involves Lufthansa flight LH2446, with scheduled service from Munich (MUC) to Copenhagen (CPH). The short 504-mile flight was operated by an Airbus A320neo, and was supposed to depart at 9:30PM and arrive at 11:05PM, but that’s not how things played out.
According to reports from passengers, they ended up being stranded on the plane overnight, after the flight was canceled, but there were no buses to transport passengers back to the terminal.
The flight had a rolling delay, but passengers were still driven to the plane, which was departing from a remote stand. Once onboard the plane, the rolling delay continued. After some amount of time — it’s not clear exactly with what timeframe — the flight had to be canceled. The flight status page on Lufthansa’s website shows the flight as having a delayed 11:56PM “departure,” but of course the plane never actually went anywhere.
Okay, that sucks, but it happens. You’d think passengers would then be transported back to the terminal, right? Well, not so fast. Every 30 minutes or so, the crew provided updates about how they were trying to get buses to pick up passengers and bring them back to the terminal, but that just didn’t prove to be so easy.
At around 2AM, the passengers were reportedly informed by the crew that the airport was closed, and all of the bus drivers had gone home for the night, so passengers wouldn’t be allowed to leave the plane, and would have to sleep onboard for the rest of the night.
Keep in mind this is a regional configured aircraft, with no blankets or pillows, tight pitch, and a very limited supply of food and drinks onboard. It’s not clear when exactly passengers were finally allowed off the plane, other than that it was well after 2AM, and in the “early morning hours.”
At some point early in the morning, passengers were driven to the terminal, and were rebooked on other flights to Copenhagen. The first set of passengers were booked on the 6:40AM flight, which was delayed by roughly an hour.
How could something like this happen at a hub airport?
Admittedly airline and airport operations are incredibly complex, and the public has a tendency to oversimplify things. But this particular situation is mind boggling on so many levels:
- Munich Airport is one of Lufthansa’s two mega hubs, so it’s not like Lufthansa doesn’t have access to resources at the airport
- Munich Airport has a strict curfew at 12AM, so I don’t understand how this stretched on for hours after that, when you’d think it would be clear that the plane isn’t going anywhere
- An airport that accommodates 40+ million passengers per year doesn’t have a system in place to get a bus driver to move passengers from a stranded plane?
- Was there not even a vacant gate the plane could be taxied to by the pilots, to make deplaning possible?
There must have been some sort of a colossal communication screw-up here, or something, for things to go this wrong.
Bottom line
Some Lufthansa passengers traveling from Munich to Copenhagen were in for a very unpleasant surprise, when they spent the night onboard the plane without actually going anywhere.
The flight had a rolling delay, and it was ultimately canceled. However, by the time it was canceled, the airline could reportedly no longer arrange a bus to transport passengers back to the terminal. So passengers had to spend the night on the plane, with transportation only being arranged in the early hours of the morning.
I find it absolutely shocking that something like this could happen at an airport the size of Munich, especially when the airline involved is the dominant airline there.
What do you make of this Lufthansa overnight saga?
Sounds like the incident at Sapporo airport in late January.
Unusually heavy snow basically closed the city itself - no trains could get in or out of the airport. Taxis very limited, most buses not able to get to the city.
Yet widebodies kept coming in from Tokyo with passengers arriving and no viable way out of the airport. 7,000 people slept there that night but everything was utter calm resignation because, Japan.
Being trapped in a domestic A320 overnight and being tapped in an airport overnight are two different things. One is inhumane. The other just sucks.
That's beyond believable. There has to be more to this. If not, my God, and LH has become truly a third world airline.
What’s the penalty for opening the emergency slide?
Surprised there is not law against that in Germany/EU. Doesn't that exist in the US after that JetBlue incident years ago?
So the pilots slept in the cockpit and the FA's slept in their jump seats???
Would that be false imprisonment? At least in the US, barring some weather something that made it physically impossible to deplane I imagine there would probably be a lawsuit with a pretty decent settlement if an airline/airport did this.
I’m guessing the cabin crew had to stay onboard the whole night as well?
In no circumstance is it acceptable to tell passengers to just sleep on the plane at a parked gate, even if remote. They should all get compensation - and more than a few miles.
What happened to the pilots and flight attendants?
Yeah even I, who am usually very casual about these things, would likely have tried to open a door at some point in the middle of the night. Or at a minimum call the police or feign a medical emergency.
No big deal if the passengers merely go with the flow , and stop complaining .
How Germany become a big mess. Sad.