Lufthansa Sues Passenger Who Missed His Flight in an Apparent Bid To Clamp Down on 'Hidden City' Trick (cnn.com) 502
Airline Lufthansa has sued a passenger, who didn't show up for the last leg of his ticketed journey, in an apparent bid to clamp down on "hidden city" trick. From a report: The practice involves passengers leaving their journey at a layover point, instead of making a final connection. For instance, someone flying from New York to San Francisco could book a cheaper trip from New York to Lake Tahoe with a layover in San Francisco and get off there, without bothering to take the last leg of the flight. According to a court document, an unnamed male passenger booked a return flight from Oslo to Seattle, which had a layover in Frankfurt. The passenger used all legs of the outbound flight, but did not catch the Frankfurt to Oslo return flight. He instead flew on a separate Lufthansa reservation from Frankfurt to Berlin. The report adds that a Berlin district court dismissed the case in December last year, but the airline company is now appealing that verdict. Worth noting here that United Airlines has also tried its luck on this front -- to no dice.
Seems like they don't have a "leg" to stand on (Score:5, Insightful)
What if you needed to go somewhere else because of an emergency? Should you really be forced to take every leg of a flight you have booked?
If they don't want people getting off midway through a series of flights, maybe try not pricing an entire trip with multiple legs less than the individual flight to the city in the middle. Their own byzantine pricing system is what led to this result.
If they were smart they'd take advantage of such travelers and allow them to cancel some of the legs after booking, as a way to illuminate pricing errors in the system. Then they'd have an open seat someone else could fill as well. Win -Win.
Re:Seems like they don't have a "leg" to stand on (Score:5, Insightful)
This passenger behavior is just a form of arbitrage. The airlines have created unequal markets for point-to-point travel, and some clever people are taking advantage. Arbitrage is as old as markets, is never going away, and almost always benefits consumers.
The airlines are presumably hoping for some sort of regulatory capture to distort the market, but I don't see them having much luck with that in Europe. They'd have better luck buying a Senate committee here in the US.
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>The airlines are presumably hoping for some sort of regulatory capture to distort the market
Or they re trying to give attention to the trial so people dont do it by fear of getting sued.
Re:Seems like they don't have a "leg" to stand on (Score:5, Funny)
This passenger behavior is just a form of arbitrage.
Don't you mean airbitrage?
I'll see myself out ...
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Re:Seems like they don't have a "leg" to stand on (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not regulatory capture which distorts the market. It's a quasi-monopoly. The places I've seen this behavior (missing a leg of a flight) benefit passengers most is at airports where one airline dominates - a hub. Back when Northwest was still around, Detroit was one of their hubs. Something like 80% of all the flights in and out of Detroit were Northwest. That reduced competition meant that Northwest had undue influence over the pricing for tickets in and out of Detroit. They exploited that to charge excessively high prices for tickets starting and ending in Detroit.
But because Detroit was their hub, that meant a ton of flights between other cities made stopovers in Detroit to change planes. The other cities had plenty of competition so their fares were priced a lot closer to the airline's cost. That's what creates the opportunity for people to book flights between different cities at a lower price, and get off at Detroit (missing the last leg). So it's not strictly arbitrage per se, it's just bypassing the airline's quasi-monopoly pricing at a particular airport. (Higher pricing at airports with competition are usually due to fees charged by the different airports. e.g. Flights to/from Los Angeles International are cheaper than to/from Burbank, Long Beach, Ontario, or Orange County because the same agency operates all those airports but charges the lowest fees for LAX.)
I used a similar tactic to visit my sister for free when she was at the University of Michigan, and I was in Boston. Whenever I flew home to visit my parents in California, I'd book a flight with a layover in Detroit, and deliberately maximize the layover time (which gave me about 4 hours there). My sister would meet me at the airport, we'd go out and have a meal together and talk and catch up, and I'd take any presents she wanted me to bring my parents.
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It's not regulatory capture which distorts the market. It's a quasi-monopoly. The places I've seen this behavior (missing a leg of a flight) benefit passengers most is at airports where one airline dominates - a hub. Back when Northwest was still around, Detroit was one of their hubs. Something like 80% of all the flights in and out of Detroit were Northwest. That reduced competition meant that Northwest had undue influence over the pricing for tickets in and out of Detroit. They exploited that to charge excessively high prices for tickets starting and ending in Detroit.
You've also got to remember that part of your air fare is paying:
1. The airport.
2. The local fees and taxes.
I'm not sure if they have to do this in the US, but over here in the UK the receipt details the additional taxes and fees you are paying. I had a flight last year between LHR and LAX for a bargain £312, over half of that were fees and taxes (not including VAT (sales tax) as we don't tax the tax component), the actual fare was £140.
Different airports cost different amounts to use, if
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It's not a pricing error though, it's a "hay we noticed that there is insufficient competition on this route, so we can charge you more!" situation.
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Not really... it is about charging a premium on hub-hub routes to subsidize the cost of more price sensitive outlying city-hub routes. The game makes the aviation market "fairer" for everyone. For the airline, it also dis-incentivizes taking flights in banks that are well timed for onward connections.-- go earlier or later and maybe the hub-hub flight is cheaper.
But, when you are the flier, you might as well do everything you can to get a better deal. The airline isn't looking out for you.
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Subsidies don't make it "fairer" for anyone. Fair is people paying for what they actually use, not a few paying less, and passing the costs onto everyone else.
Subsidies always incur a cost of unintended consequences. Arbitrage is one of those unintended consequences, as the airlines have found out.
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If they don't want people getting off midway through a series of flights, maybe try not pricing an entire trip with multiple legs less than the individual flight to the city in the middle. Their own byzantine pricing system is what led to this result.
It's not always done by airlines for shits and giggles. A lot of airports have frequency requirements for landing slots, so instead of flying completely empty planes on routes to preserve slot allocation (which does happen), they may offer reduced fares to those cities. The airlines may be giving up a revenue premium to generate demand in the other city to help offset the loss that would otherwise occur. This goes for smaller airports as well that may have government subsidies to increase access for smal
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I'm not really convinced on your last part. They scan tickets as you're boarding a flight, so would know if you weren't on it in the case of an accident.
Re:Seems like they don't have a "leg" to stand on (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not really convinced on your last part. They scan tickets as you're boarding a flight, so would know if you weren't on it in the case of an accident.
On through flights passengers are not forced to deplane and reboard, they generally stay on the plane, so tickets are not rescanned.
Re: Seems like they don't have a "leg" to stand on (Score:2)
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On through flights, they count the passengers remaining on the plane and adjust the manifest if someone is missing. Usually counting them all multiple times.
Re:Seems like they don't have a "leg" to stand on (Score:5, Insightful)
they are needing to drive traffic to that destination for some reason
Maybe so, but buying an airline ticket in no way obliges you to use it.
If anything you're saving them money through improved efficiency (fewer bags/people to board/disembark), greater safety (fewer people stampeding through an exit in an emergency), a superior experience for their other customers (more elbow room, fewer distractions for the cabin crew) and lower fuel costs because the aircraft is lighter.
Shit, they should be paying him.
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> The real problem is when an airport like (say) Reno is paying $300 for every ticket sold to the airline
Citation needed.
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(note, I'm aware of the Essential Air Service subsidies at Reno, but they are for specific low volume routes, not something someone would be likely to get on from SkipLagged. and they ain't $300!)
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If they were passing the payment on to the customer, then they'd have a complaint.
If they're keeping that money and it encourages them to offer lower prices, then they have no complaint.
Customers are not responsible for managing the budgets of the airlines, or to make their business decisions for them. And when they try, the airlines say "no" to everything customers want, universally.
Re:Seems like they don't have a "leg" to stand on (Score:5, Informative)
"Flying half-empty is not efficiency, quite the contrary. You're wasting more fuel per passenger because of the fixed costs, such as the weight of the plane itself."
We aren't talking about flights half full because only half the tickets are sold. We are talking about flights FULLY paid for, but the passenger isn't there. It's no different than if a passenger doesn't show up for some reason. The airline still gets their money. And they may have a chance to sell that same seat again.
This makes no sense? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not always done by airlines for shits and giggles. A lot of airports have frequency requirements for landing slots, so instead of flying completely empty planes on routes to preserve slot allocation (which does happen), they may offer reduced fares to those cities.
Your argument makes absolutely zero sense. If they flew an empty plane then they would make no passenger revenue for that flight. However, by reducing the cost of a ticket when the passenger flies an additional leg they will actually now have negative revenue because the passenger is paying less than they would have if they had got a ticket just to the hub.
Your scenario provides motivation for not adding anything to the cost of the ticket to fly the extra leg (they are going to fly the plane anyway and the extra convenience might attract more passengers) but your argument provide no economic reason to reduce the cost of the ticket for flying an extra leg. I suspect the difference is because a different destination is a different market with different competitive pressures. So really it is just the airline trying to screw more money out of people staying near a hub because they know they will pay it.
Re:That's not just a "scenario" (Score:5, Insightful)
This is actually how airports set up their runway schedules. There's a set number of departure and arrival slots and if an airline starts missing the slot they risk loosing it - so to preserve those slots they'll straight up run empty flights. It's similar to back when they had limited international phone lines - big companies would pay people to read books over a connection so they could hold the line so they wouldn't have to wait for it to become available again when they needed to make an urgent call.
The other reason they run empty or near empty planes is because if that plane doesn't make it to the destination, then it's not going to be able to make its next scheduled flight.
But none of this is the passenger's concern - if I paid for a connecting flight, the airline is getting the same revenue from me whether I get on it or not, but they are saving a little money in fuel and other costs when I don't get on.
Re:Seems like they don't have a "leg" to stand on (Score:4, Interesting)
Except this does't quite work in pricing.
For shits and giggles, I just priced out a small airport to small airport, connecting at a large hub, one way trip:
SCE - PHL - ABE
Flight plan:
Depart SCE @ 6:11AM, land In PHL @ 7:08AM
Depart PHL @ 8:15AM, land in ABE @ 9:12AM
Cost of ticket on American Airlines: $210
Now let's just do SCE - PHL
Flight plan:
Depart SCE @ 6:11AM, land in PHL @ 7:08AM
Cost of ticket on American Airlines: $447
That's $237 less, or a savings of 53%. Just how much per person is being subsidized to an extremely large, national airline, even if it's from a smaller sub partner?
I can tell you the actual flights are flowing by Piedmont Airlines as American Eagle...
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Cost of ticket on American Airlines: $447
That's $237 less, or a savings of 53%. Just how much per person is being subsidized to an extremely large, national airline, even if it's from a smaller sub partner? I can tell you the actual flights are flowing by Piedmont Airlines as American Eagle...
The Essential Air Service program subsidized from $10-977 per passenger in 2014. Of course, from what I can see ABE and SCE aren't in EAS. I would say that part of it is that (I'm going to say "loss" as in the difference between the 2 fares, not necessarily that the ticket loses money) the loss from the SCE-PHL-ABE is spread between 2 flight segments and therefore the difference is mostly made up from other passengers.
Aircraft also have minimum operating costs that must be covered (fuel, maintenance, et
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You would think that they would have min-maxed the landing slot problem already and keep 2-3 regional jets, maybe even smaller turboprops around for just this purpose. I'm guessing the landing slot doesn't specify equipment, and it sounds a lot cheaper to me to fly a Saab turboprop with just a flight crew than a passenger jet running at marginal profitability load. The "slot only" plane has less fuel, doesn't need a flight attendant crew, and might even be able to get away with a junior pilot instead of a
Re:Seems like they don't have a "leg" to stand on (Score:5, Insightful)
The skipping out part is the issue.
OK, so don't use the word "skip" as a pejorative, and the whole problem is solved! Wow, that was easy. They didn't "skip out," they "went somewhere else because they enjoy Freedom."
Re:Seems like they don't have a "leg" to stand on (Score:5, Insightful)
because A) your luggage B) where did we lose this person C) we now have to delay the flight to make sure our count is correct. D) is there a security risk to the plane.
A) your luggage This trick doesn't work with checked bags, since airlines tend to check bags through to the final destination. Hidden-city travel is a strictly carry-on-only tactic.
B) where did we lose this person They know where they lost you, since they scanned your boarding pass when you boarded the first flight, and they didn't scan your boarding pass at the gate for the connecting flight.
C) we now have to delay the flight to make sure our count is correct This is the only potentially obnoxious consequence--some airlines may delay a flight by a few minutes to allow a "lost" passenger to get to the gate. But if an airline has a takeoff slot they're not going to give it up to recover one wayward traveller. And they do a headcount of passengers on board before every flight anyway--if it matches the count they get from the scanned boarding passes, they're good to go.
D) is there a security risk to the plane Nope. They know that you and your carry-on were on the first plane, but that makes you no more dangerous to that aircraft than any other passenger. They know that you're not on the second plane, since you and your carry-on never boarded. They know you don't have a checked bag in the hold.
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Screw the airlines. We just let that final leg go unused and eventually expire.
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What if you needed to go somewhere else because of an emergency?
The terms of service you agree to when you buy the ticket and enter into an agreement with the airline prohibits the "hidden city" type behavior, unless there is an emergency.
In this particular case the person already had a reserved flight from the hidden city. He can't claim there was an emergency or the other exceptions that would release him from the TOS. It's right in the summary:
He instead flew on a separate Lufthansa reservation from Frankfurt to Berlin.
There was solid evidence showing he intended on breaking the terms of service and constructed his own route. To me this is
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I don't know, I think having a paid flight somewhere that you'll miss counts as an emergency. You can argue that you probably shouldn't cause yourself emergencies, but that's really a personal choice, right?
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I was thinking the same exact thing. Considering how often airlines will pay passengers to get 'bumped' from their flights altogether, I'd think they'd actually make more money being able to sell that seat to someone else.
Re:Seems like they don't have a "leg" to stand on (Score:5, Insightful)
Airlines do everything in their power to cheat the customer. Just look at the overbooking practices.
Customers have almost no recourse.
This guy didn't "cheat the system" he bought a flight and didn't take it. Are you honestly suggesting that he is morally obligated to consume the seat he purchased? Do you also think that if you don't finish your meal the restaurant can sue you?
This is not cheating the airlines... it's called.. (Score:3, Interesting)
This is business. In the same way that they are maximizing their profits and inconveniencing their customers by overbooking flights.
It's not a hack, a scam, or a trick. It's simply underflying. You overbook. We underfly.
And I can't imagine that this happens often enough to warrant new laws, or lawsuits. Unless you ask a lawyer, then by all means drop your soul off at the door and let's get to it.
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Re:Seems like they don't have a "leg" to stand on (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, I don't approve of this guys behavior, these tricks to cheat the system, normally always end up making us pay more.
I approve of it. For one thing he isn't cheating the system. For a car analogy, guy paid for a 7-day rental but returned the car on day 5 and did not request reimbursement for the remaining 2 days.
If paying for something, not using it, and not requesting a refund somehow results in other people paying more for that thing, that is a seriously broken system and I cannot understand how you can defend it.
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Re: Seems like they don't have a "leg" to stand on (Score:2)
They typically don't offer 5 day rentals.
I did this one time when I was in the US for a few months and needed to drive to a different state for a 4 day long weekend. Renting the car on a per-day basis for 4 days would have cost more than a week-long rental. So I rented it for a week.
I believe the company was Enterprise, not sure.
It is kind for flights to wait a bit at least (Score:3)
However, why did the plane wait so long for the passenger to arrive?
It is I think a kindness to hold the flight for some time for passengers that have just made a mistake - one time in Frankfurt we had something like an hour connection between international flights, which we thought would be OK - but changing gates we found we had to go through some internal security checkpoint, and would have been screwed if it hadn't been for some kind security person escorting us through directly.
This is exactly why in m
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the airlines built, they need to suck it up (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:the airlines built, they need to suck it up (Score:4, Insightful)
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the airlines should take a tip from the mint then and end their insane pricing practices. notice the mint didn't sue anyone for perfectly legal activity just because it wasn't what they wanted. they where the ones to change not the customer.
Re:the airlines built, they need to suck it up (Score:4, Interesting)
It was a short lived scam, the real issue was that they government didn't stop printing paper dollars.
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Scam implies that something illegal was taking place, but that wasn't the case. The Mint made something available for sale, the credit card companies offered points, and the banks accepted the coins as legal tender. It was a clever way to accumulate points that took advantage of certain incentives offered, nothing more, nothing less.
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scams don't have to be illegal dude
A scam by definition involves fraud, which is illegal. QED, scams have to be illegal.
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Not all frauds are illegal. QED, scams can be legal.
All frauds for gain are illegal, and the point of a scam is gain. QED, blah blah blah
Re:the airlines built, they need to suck it up (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a form of "gaming the system" that can cost someone else money.
How? Provided the passenger had no checked bags (which would be really hard to get back so I doubt this was the case) there is no way that not taking a flight results in a higher cost to the airline, in fact the exact opposite is going to be true since they can save on fuel.
As I understand it an air ticket is a contract you purchase from the airline that they will transport you between two locations on a certain set of flights. You have not promised that you will take the flights you have merely purchased the right to take those flights. If you decide at any point not to take a flight then, while you forfeit the cost of the ticket, there is nothing they can do. If not then this would mean that, in addition to forcing you to buy another ticket, the airline could sue any passenger who failed to turn up for even the start of a flight e.g. due to traffic delays etc. Good luck to any airline that starts doing that!
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However the most outrageous story CreditCardForum has heard was from a man who reportedly ordered over $2,400,000 worth of dollar coins in total, since the inception of the program. Because the U.S. Mint quickly placed restrictions on how many and how often a given person could buy, this man claimed to have a vast network of friends, family members, and personal mail boxes to accept his constant flow of deliveries.
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Airlines build a pricing system that enables this sort of behavior then blames the customer for using it?
I'm trying to figure out how suing your customers is ever going to be a winning business strategy.
I'm favorably inclined toward Lufthansa but someone needs to be hit by a giant foam cluebat.
Their growl has no bite (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Their growl has no bite (Score:5, Insightful)
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Many of their tricks to determine how much I will pay for a flight are morally questionable.
I'm sure there's an algorithm behind airline pricing. I'd love to know what it is. I'd love to just know what the inputs are, never mind what computation happens with those inputs.
Specifically, I assume the airlines have actually figured out that their obtuse pricing actually maximizes their revenue and profits. The odd prices must have some benefit (e.g. the plane is being repositioned so any seat they sell is a win). That being said, I find it difficult to envision how selling a ticket but not having a pa
Baggage Risk (Score:3)
My only hesitation in doing this would be that if they force people to gate-check bags to the final destination, you're in big trouble. You can mitigate that risk by selecting seats that board earlier and by showing up early, but it's still a risk.
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Congratulations on committing a felony.
Awww, is your arrogant ass upset that there actually are ways to get more than even for you being a selfish asshat on an airplane?
Never thought that someone ELSE could gate-check YOUR oversized carryon to TimBukTu without your knowledge? And now every time you hog space on a plane nowhere near your own seat because you're too pasty-flabby to carry your bag 12 feet without fear of a heart attack, you'll be worried that your bag will be gone?
GOOD, YOU SELFISH FUCK!!!
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You had no way of knowing he wasn't sitting there, right under the bag.
If it fits into the overhead, it's _not_ oversized.
I call bullshit, you're just pretending, about something you imagined once.
Easy to manage (Score:2)
My only hesitation in doing this would be that if they force people to gate-check bags to the final destination, you're in big trouble.
You usually know before you even leave for the airport if this is likely to be a problem for you. Most trips I've taken lately have only needed a modest amount of cary on luggage my bag easily fits in the seat in front of me if there is no room overhead. Worst case is that I lose some leg room but I won't have to check anything no matter what. I knew that before I left for the airport.
What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously... what? So an airline gets someone to pay for a ticket and they save the airline money by not taking up space and weight... presumably someone could have flown on standby also so there is potential for the airline to double dip if someone doesn't show up for their flight... and they are pissed 'cause their pricing model didn't account for people who might want to actually go to the layover city. They aren't losing money by someone paying for, but not fully utilizing the service. The airlines should be liable for court costs plus penalty if they pull this shit.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re: What? (Score:4, Interesting)
Just to add... AFAIK, the ONLY regularly-scheduled passenger service between the US & Europe is The Queen Mary. I think it averages a round trip between NY and Southhampton every 3-4 weeks, is ASTRONOMICALLY expensive, and takes 8-10 days each way.
Cruise ships make similar trips as repositioning cruises, but usually just once per year each way (ex: NCL moves a few ships from Florida to Europe in the spring, and brings them back in the fall). THOSE cruises are cheap per-day... but long & boring. Minimal live entertainment, lots of maintenance work during the crossing, and generally no/poor internet access. In the Caribbean, they have a combination of terrestrial LTE and satellite spot-beam service... mid-atlantic, they have the equivalent of one 64kbps dialup line to share among ALL the passengers.
Side note about slow connectivity in general: anything that involves https, SSH, or a VPN is unlikely to work unless you use it in the middle of the night when nobody else is using it, because TLS handshaking enforces timeouts for MITM protection that are only slightly longer than the time required to transmit the handshake at ~19.2kbps. (TLS basically enforces a timeout that's long enough to permit handshaking over a direct point-to-point 9600 baud connection between a credit card terminal & server, but even tcp/ip + wifi overhead is enough to cause a timeout at 14.4kbps, or a single retransmitted packet at 19.2kbps).
It's not your imagination that web sites that USED to crawl on congested phone networks now don't work AT ALL under the same conditions. 10 years ago, almost nothing used https. Now, nearly everything does. So it's easy for a congested, shared network to get itself into a state where nobody can do ANYTHING. It's a use case that wasn't unforeseen, but whose consequences were underestimated 20 years ago because back then, nobody envisioned using https for literally everything. Also, a single ad-funded web page can EASILY initiate dozens of https handshakes, because every affiliate link & ad requires its own separately-negotiated connection. Google tried to mitigate the problem with SPDY, but I think someone discovered a major exploit in the protocol a year or two ago, forcing them to scrap the whole thing and go back to the drawing board.
Dick move (Score:3)
So airlines have idiotic pricing policies and somehow this is the fault of the passengers for taking advantage of the airline's lunacy? It is entirely within their power to make this money saving trick go away by simple charging the sum of all the rates for each leg of the flight.
It's not clear to me why they would care. They have their money and if they don't have to transport the passenger on that leg then they save fuel or they can put someone else in the seat since they seem to always overbook flights anyway.
The report adds that a Berlin district court dismissed the case, but the airline company is now appealing that verdict.
It's certainly not illegal and it's not clear the passenger had any sort of contractual obligation to fly the entire distance of the flight.
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When he bought his ticket he agreed that he would board every flight at the scheduled time or else pay a cancellation service charge. It's part of most airlines terms and conditions. The questions to decide are "is this clickwrap agreement a contract?" and "is a clause that says if you miss your flight for any reason, the airline can charge you any amount they choose, an unconscionable clause?"
Terms and conditions (Score:3)
When he bought his ticket he agreed that he would board every flight at the scheduled time or else pay a cancellation service charge.
Terms of agreements have to be agreed to by both parties. Sounds like a German court found that such a contract was not valid for some reason. My guess is that it was thrown out at least in part because the airline cannot show that they were harmed in any way. And just because they have a contract does not automatically mean that contract is legally valid. There are lots of reasons why a contract might be held to be unenforceable.
It's part of most airlines terms and conditions.
Here are Lufthansa's terms and conditions [lufthansa.com]. I see nothing about the passen
weird (Score:3)
This saved some fuel.
What is the problem for the airline? (other people accused the pricing system)
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They would stop the flight since it is empty and there is no demand. Easy enough solution.
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So what is the problem exactly? Even if the plane is empty the airline still gets paid the same.
I fail to see the problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
In my experience many flights are overbooked (which I think is an asshole move by the airline). The passenger paid for a ticket and then didn't use it? How are they losing money? Either the seat is empty for the last leg of the flight, saving the airline on fuel. Or the airline can resell the seat or give it to an overbooked passenger.
If the airlines are going the legal route for this BS, then just wait for an onslaught of justified passenger lawsuits by of crappy industry practices.
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They consider they're losing money because the flight to the midpoint, booked by itself, would cost more than the longer flight. They're out the difference.
Of course, they're full of crap, but that's their logic.
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Are they? Because he would have paid the same whether he was there or not. In terms of book-keeping - they lost nothing.
I mean put it this way - if you pay for a flight and don't show up at all - would they take you to court?
Overbooking means he should be rewarded (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree totally, since airlines basically always (I think the OP was generous in saying "many flights" are) overbook then isn't somebody doing this actually providing the airline with an opportunity to avoid a negative experience for another customer?
And, if this is the case, shouldn't the customer be rewarded rather than sued?
then this case (Score:2)
Then I get off at the first city we land at.
I paid plenty, the plane is lighter.
So, what are the airline's damages? (Score:4, Informative)
The airline saved money on fuel by not hauling the passenger and his luggage on the last leg. Perhaps, they even filled that seat with a last minute full-fare standby passenger. Even if they were legally correct, what damages did they incur by the passenger breaching their contract?
Re:So, what are the airline's damages? (Score:5, Insightful)
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The damages are the difference in price of the tickets for the actual route the customer flew.
If this hadn't been dismissed, those damages theoretically would be offset by the savings in fuel and/or standby passenger who got the seat.
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Those aren't damages as the airline didn't incur any loss from the passenger's action - the airline happily sold tickets for N legs, the passenger only used N-1 legs thereby saving the airline money and, perhaps, giving them an opportunity to even make a lot of additional money if they sold the unclaimed seat to a full fare standby passenger.
Suppose I buy a gallon of milk from the store knowing that I'm only going to use three quarts of it but the one-gallon package is cheaper than three one-quart packages
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what damages did they incur by the passenger breaching their contract?
If a passenger doesn't show up for the last segment of a flight, the airline has to make the decision that the passenger is not going to show up and act the airline has to act on that decision before the plane departs. The decision involves if the airline should wait for the passenger and potentially delay the flight, give or sell the seat to a standby passenger, or leave the seat empty. The airline also as to check to ensure that no bags were checked, as if there were bags checked they generally have to be
Re: (Score:2)
I don't recall commercial airlines delaying flights simply because a passenger never checks in (either themselves or their luggage - which I assume is the case here). It happens on most every flight and that's why if a flight is fully booked on a large plane, it will almost always end up with standby passengers. The passenger's actions certainly didn't inconvenience other passengers -- they have no idea the seat was booked. It may also offer a great convenience to another passenger -- the one who snagged th
Re: So, what are the airline's damages? (Score:3)
A bag can fly without its passenger, but ONLY if it's INTENSIVELY searched by hand (and X-ray, bomb-sniffers, etc) beforehand, or the passenger is on board A flight & had no reason to suspect his bag(s) wouldn't be on the same plane.
Otherwise, it would be impossible to send mishandled bags on the next flight to their proper destination. You'd have to wait for a cargo flight or FedEx to take it.
Airlines try to avoid doing it because they have to REALLY examine & repack baggage that gets sent this way
New tactic: sue your customers. (Score:5, Insightful)
What could go wrong?
Airline's simply sqeezing every dime they can (Score:4, Insightful)
Airlines charge you for food, for blankets for baggage (believe it or not, they never used to). Like banks, which now earn more through fees than interest or investments with your money, Airlines are basing more and more of their revenue on fees. So, here we have an airline upset that they couldn't squeeze one more passenger into a seat on a flight.
Hey, Lufthansa, the passenger paid for the flight; it's not your prerogative to force him/her to take every leg.
I hope the court rules against the airline.
Re: (Score:3)
Airlines charge you for food, for blankets for baggage (believe it or not, they never used to). Like banks, which now earn more through fees than interest or investments with your money, Airlines are basing more and more of their revenue on fees.
They always charged for that, it was just built into the fare. Pre-regulation their fares were set by the government based on distance and covered all costs and a profit. With deregulation and price competition airlines unbundled to offer cheap fares and now charge extra for stuff that used to be in the base price. I like that because I don't have to pay for stuff I don't need, like a checked bag.
This has always been stupid (Score:2)
I had a girlfriend once visiting, who had an outbound flight from LA to Japan with a layover in San Francisco. We had decided to drive up to San Francisco, so we called and asked what would happen if she missed the LA flight and simply got on in San Francisco. They told us it was illegal, and she wouldn't be booked. According to them, we HAD to drag her back to LA.
So we did the only logical thing.
We took her to the airport in San Francisco and got her boarding pass for the flght to Japan before the flight f
Re:This has always been stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
Years ago I had a friend flying to visit family in the UK. The cheapest available ticket flew Atlanta > Houston > Atlanta > London. The airline absolutely insisted that he fly Atlanta > Houston > Atlanta instead of getting on in the middle.
Stupidity all around.
Conditions... (Score:2)
I think, as a condition for the airlines to sue for missed flights, they should no longer be allowed to overbook. Otherwise, they're setting up a situation where they can sue all the passengers they didn't have seats for.
Destination tax workaround (Score:3, Informative)
It's their own fault for artificially inflating prices based on the route rather than the costs incurred. Travelling from Munich to Brussels for example often costs as much as an overseas flight, while the same route with a layover in Brussels and a termination in Amsterdam costs 1/4 the price. If they wish to gouge people based on what they think someone is willing to pay, it is no surprise that people find workarounds.
They have already tried tactics like refusing to let you board your return flight if you didn't complete all the legs on the outbound, which is now also being challenged in court.
Really? (Score:3)
If it's cheaper to NOT TAKE A FLIGHT for the customer, what the hell are you selling? You have literally saved money - the customer paid, didn't use part of their trip, didn't cost you fuel and loading time, and if you had half a brain they would have been able to do that AND tell you that the last seat would be unoccupied, which you could then legitimately sell on to a last minute customer and make EVEN MORE money.
It's like a customer buying a 3-for-the-price-of-2 offer, binning the 3rd free item because they only needed two, and then you trying to sue them to use that third item.
It's not like they gave it away. It's not like someone else turned up expecting to sit in that seat and couldn't. It's not like they committed fraud by having someone else come along and take their place on the final leg. Your prices literally make it more viable to NOT utilise a part of the service that they could do so, for "free" (after they'd paid all the bits they did use), and you save some small amount of money in the process (and someone else gets an empty seat to enjoy on the flight).
Use your brains, change your pricing structure and/or allow people to flag such seats as "unused even though I got it as part of the deal" and then you could make a killing selling just that seat on to someone else as per your normal booking system.
Much easier is to just not price that way. It's not like that passenger not coming onto that flight (i.e. not saying they will board at all, so you're not even looking for them) has cost you any money in any way, shape or form by not appearing - so you've basically given them a flight they didn't want, for free, and then complained they didn't use it.
Solution is simple. (Score:2)
Simplify their pricing structure.
But no! This would stop them from milking every last cent out of the people who fly in their little "You must be a contortionist" chambers.
The case in December... (Score:2)
The court decision can be found here: https://www.franz.de/fileadmin/user_upload/urteil_ag_mitte_anonymisiert.pdf
The decision back then argued that LH can actually put in their Conditions of Carriage that if a leg of the flight is not taken, LH has the right to charge a price difference.
The reasons why it did not accept the argument:
* there is no transparency as to how the price difference is calculated. The passenger cannot check anywhere online what the equivalent price would be without the last leg, thus
They also don't like trip nesting (Score:5, Interesting)
I once needed to be in Europe twice within a three week period for two different clients. As I booked my travel, I noticed that I could book Europe->North America fares a lot cheaper than North America -> Europe, and also that if I stayed at least 1 weekend, the trip was also much cheaper. So what I did was book the bookends of the two trips on one fare (round trip NA->EU->NA) then booked a second trip (EU->NA->EU) in the middle so I could come home.
It all went off pretty well when I flew it, and I saved a significant chunk of my employer's money with the trick. A couple of months later, though, I got a nastygram from the Airline chastising me for violating the fare rules. Given that I was a 100k frequent flyer at the time, I replied back, CC'ing the appropriate people in the frequent flyer program that I didn't appreciate the tone of their letter, and that had I known it would have been a problem, i would have hapily either stayed in Europe for the 5 days, or booked it on another airline, thereby denying them the revenue of the additional flight.
I later got an apology, and a token amount of miles to "make things right"
They cause this themselves (Score:3)
I once booked a return flight from Bergen (Norway) to somewhere in Mexico. Once there, I had to change my plans and wouldn't be going back to Bergen, but staying in Munich, where I had a layover.
When I first got to the airport in Mexico, I told the people at the counter about it, just so they would know and not wait for me at the Munich airport, and the employee at the counter told me that making any changes to my reservation would cost $300 USD. He wouldn't budge, so I just walked away in Munich (I had no checked luggage). What the hell do they expect?
very wrong (Score:2)
Star Alliance (Score:3)
Lufthansa who are doing this in Germany, and United Airlines who tried this in the USA are both members of the Star Alliance [wikipedia.org].
They share programs, procedures and booking system with each other while not competing on the same routes, even though several of them both land and take off in the Germany.
Lufthansa is therefore not suing for creating precedence just for itself, but on behalf of all of its members.
So, if you'd want to boycott Lufthansa and/or United Airlines for this stunt, then you would probably want to boycott all of them.
Besides those two mentioned, they are:
Adria Airways, Aegean Airlines, Air Canada, Air India, Air New Zealand, All Nippon Airways, Asiana Airlines, Austrian Airlines. Avianca, Brussels Airlines, Copa Airlines, Croatia Airlines, EgyptAir, Ethiopian Airlines, EVA Air, LOT Polish Airlines, Scandinavian Airlines, Shenzhen Airlines, Singapore Airlines, South African Airways, Swiss International Air Lines, TAP Air Portugal, Thai Airways and Turkish Airlines.
The Happy Meal Analogy (Score:3)
Let's look at a Happy Meal Analogy:
At McWendKing a burder is $5, fries $3 and soft drink $4. They also sell a Happy Meal (burder, fries and soft-drink) for $7. So I buy a Happy Meal, eat the burder and fries but leave the soft-drink cup on the pick up counter -- then the restaurant sues me for not filing my cup up at the fountain.
Why worry? (Score:2)
The trick for me is to not go further into detail about how I do it, but I have done this on many holidays over the past few years.
It's not like it's a big secret how to do it. I've done it too. Why the cloak and dagger? It's not illegal, immoral, or fattening. If they don't want people to do it then they shouldn't offer pricing which makes it advantageous.
Re: (Score:2)
More accurately you buy the 7 course meal because you love the filet and skip eating the kale salad. For some reason the whole meal is cheaper than the filet a la carte.