Lufthansa Dummy Ticket: How It Works for a Germany or Schengen Visa

Lufthansa is the obvious carrier for anyone applying to Germany, and it turns up on plenty of other Schengen itineraries too, connecting through Frankfurt or Munich. A Lufthansa dummy ticket is simply a held reservation on Lufthansa flights: a booking code, your names, your dates, and no paid fare behind it. Below we explain how Lufthansa's own "My bookings" tool finds a reservation, what Lufthansa publishes about holds and cancellations, and, most usefully, what German missions in different countries actually say about flights. The answer is not the same everywhere.

Lufthansa and Germany visa: key facts

How does a Lufthansa reservation work for a visa?

We hold seats on real Lufthansa flights for your route and dates, issue the booking in the names you give us, and email you a PDF. The PDF shows the flights, the times and the booking code. That code is what makes it worth having, because anybody with your surname can enter it on lufthansa.com and see the booking.

It is a reservation, and only that. No fare has been paid, you cannot check in, and you should describe it on your forms as a "flight reservation". It is also temporary. Every held booking has a window, and ours is displayed during checkout so there are no surprises.

When does Lufthansa make sense? When it's the airline you'd actually take. A flight from your home city into Frankfurt or Munich, perhaps with a short hop on to Berlin, reads naturally in a Germany file. A Lufthansa routing that doubles back through two hubs for a short trip to Paris looks odd, and odd invites questions.

How do you find a booking in Lufthansa "My bookings"?

Lufthansa gives you two routes in: a Travel ID account, or the booking code with your name.^[1] For a reservation we've made, use the code.

1. Go to lufthansa.com and open My bookings (you'll also see it under "Manage").^[2]
2. Choose to log in with your booking code rather than Travel ID.
3. Type the six-character code from the PDF. Lufthansa's own example, ABCD12, shows the format: letters and digits mixed.^[1]
4. Type the surname the way the reservation spells it.
5. Check what loads against your visa application form, line by line.

Things that commonly go wrong are dull: a surname typed with a space that wasn't in the booking, a "0" read as an "O", or a browser that remembers last year's booking code. If it still won't open, send us the code on WhatsApp and we'll look. For a wider set of airline lookups, see verifying a PNR on the airline website and our step-by-step guide on checking a reservation before submission.

What do German missions say about flight bookings?

This is where most applicants go wrong, so it gets the most space. Germany does not publish one global list. Each embassy or consulate writes its own, and the flight line varies from relaxed to strict.

• India: a "Flight reservation" appears on the tourism list, which adds that holding a booked ticket won't earn "preferred processing".^[7] In other words, paying early buys you nothing. Applications can go in at any VFS centre in India and are decided by the Consulate General in Mumbai.^[10]
• Singapore: a reservation or an itinerary printout will do, and the page says in capitals that "NO booked ticket is needed".^[8] About as clear as an embassy gets.
• Pakistan: the tourist checklist row is headed "Flight reservation", but the instruction beneath it wants "confirmed round trip tickets" for the full length of the visit.^[9]

That Pakistan wording deserves a plain answer. "Confirmed round trip tickets" is stronger than "reservation". A held reservation may not satisfy it. If you're applying in Islamabad or Karachi, we'd suggest one of two things: ask the mission or its service provider whether a verifiable reservation is acceptable, or buy a refundable Lufthansa fare and read its refund conditions first. We would rather you spend a little more than submit something that doesn't match the instruction.

For most other missions the reservation is what's wanted. Our Germany visa guide covers the rest of the checklist, and the Schengen visa guide compares Germany with other Schengen states.

Can Lufthansa hold a fare or let you cancel for free?

In the United States, yes, within limits. Lufthansa's US Customer Service Plan says it will either hold a reservation made through its telephone reservation centre without payment for up to 24 hours, or let customers cancel without penalty up to 24 hours after booking, as long as the booking was made seven days or more before departure.^[4] That is a US commitment. We could not find an equivalent published rule for bookings made in India, the Gulf or Europe on Lufthansa's pages.

Outside that rule, Lufthansa says flight bookings can be cancelled and refunded online up to 2 hours before the journey starts, with the refund following the fare conditions of the ticket.^[3] "Follows the fare conditions" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. On the cheapest economy fares, little or nothing beyond some taxes may come back.

Getting names right on a Lufthansa reservation

Lufthansa's booking-code login asks for your name alongside the code,^[1] so the name on the reservation has to be one you can reproduce exactly. Our rule of thumb is to copy the passport's machine-readable zone: the surname is everything before the double chevron, the given names everything after.

A quick example. Say the passport shows surname SINGH and given names HARPREET KAUR. Enter Singh as surname and Harpreet Kaur as given names. Don't move Kaur into the surname because that's how friends address you, and don't drop it because it feels like a middle name. The visa officer has the passport in front of them. What they want to see is the same name, in the same order, on every document. Our name format guide covers initials, single names and married names.

Which trips is a Lufthansa reservation good for?

Germany first, naturally. After that, any Schengen trip where you'd really connect in Frankfurt or Munich: Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Czechia and so on, flying on into the country where you'll spend the most nights. The Schengen ground rules ignore the airline. You can apply from six months out until 15 days before departure, and the standard processing time is 15 days, extendable to 45.^[6] For India, the German missions allow 15 working days once a file lands at the visa section.^[7]

A Lufthansa itinerary can include flights operated by partner airlines. That's normal, and the booking code still opens on lufthansa.com, but the flight numbers may belong to another carrier. If that confuses you, our codeshare explainer sorts it out.

Multi-country trips need a little more care. Say you land in Frankfurt, spend five nights there, take a train to Prague for three, then fly home from Vienna. Germany is your main destination, so you apply to Germany, and the reservation should show Frankfurt in and Vienna out. Add the train or flight between cities as a separate booking. Our multi-country Schengen guide has more examples.

What if your appointment or travel dates move?

Appointments at visa centres get rescheduled more often than anyone would like. If yours moves by a week or more, don't try to stretch the old reservation; order a new one for dates that suit the new appointment. The cost is small compared with the risk of a booking that has lapsed or shows dates that no longer match your form.

The same thinking applies after the decision. Say you asked for 10 to 24 May and the visa is issued for 12 to 30 May. Your real Lufthansa ticket should sit inside the visa's validity, and you buy it now, not before. If the mission issued fewer days than you asked for, plan around what you were given. Our page on changing reservation dates explains the options.

Five checks before the appointment

• It opens in My bookings with your code and surname, within a day of submitting.
• Dates match the "intended arrival" and "intended departure" boxes on the application.
• Insurance covers the whole stay, from the outbound date to the return date on the reservation.
• Hotel nights add up to the same trip length.
• Every traveller is on it, children included, with names matching the passports.

And three things to avoid:

• Ordering the reservation weeks ahead "to be safe". It's less safe, because the hold may be gone when someone checks.
• Writing "ticket attached" in the cover letter. Write "flight reservation attached".
• Edited or generated PDFs with a made-up code. If it doesn't exist on lufthansa.com, it can be treated as a false document.

Longer list: common dummy ticket mistakes.

Price, and how to order a Lufthansa reservation

One flat price per passenger, whether one way or return:

Itineraries with several cities cost one price per pair of legs; hotel bookings carry a per-stay price for each guest. The price page has the details, and our Lufthansa booking page is a shortcut if you already know your route.

1. Open the booking form, enter cities and dates, and note that you'd like Lufthansa.
2. Copy each name from the passport's MRZ.
3. Check the hold period displayed at checkout. Razorpay takes UPI, cards and netbanking.
4. Watch your inbox; delivery is usually about 10 minutes. You can also check status at track your order.
5. Open the booking in Lufthansa's My bookings and check every detail.

A reservation helps your file make sense; it cannot win you a visa. That decision stays with the mission. If you want to understand the difference between holding and buying in more depth, read flight reservation for visa or held versus purchased tickets. You can also start again from the home page.

Lufthansa dummy ticket: questions people ask

Sources

All sources last checked: October 2026.

1. Lufthansa, View and manage flight (My bookings).
2. Lufthansa, Manage your bookings.
3. Lufthansa, Cancellation and refund.
4. Lufthansa, Customer Service Plan (USA).
5. Star Alliance, Member airlines.
6. European Commission, Migration and Home Affairs, Applying for a Schengen visa.
7. German Missions in India, Checklist for a Schengen visa for tourism.
8. German Embassy Singapore, Schengen visa requirements.
9. German Missions in Pakistan, Tourist visa checklist.
10. German Missions in India, Submitting a Schengen visa application at a Visa Application Centre.