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Lufthansa Sues Passenger Who Missed His Flight in an Apparent Bid To Clamp Down on 'Hidden City' Trick (cnn.com)
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.
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Airlines build a pricing system that enables this sort of behavior then blames the customer for using it?
This is a huge loss to the industry. Before they could threaten people or at least claim that people must fly the entire route. Once they went to court though, they actually had to prove it and in losing more people will use the "hidden city" work around. I don't have a lot of sympathy for the airlines. Many of their tricks to determine how much I will pay for a flight are morally questionable.
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.
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.
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.
The plane for the final leg was lighter due to the passenger not actually flying.
This saved some fuel.
What is the problem for the airline? (other people accused the pricing system)
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.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
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.
So I buy a dozen-stop flight around the world at obviously a reduced price.
Then I get off at the first city we land at.
I paid plenty, the plane is lighter.
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?
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
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.
What could go wrong?
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.
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 for LA had left, so the system wouldn't show her missing her flight.
Stupidity.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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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 my original post I advocate to let people cancel further legs of a multiple leg flight they have booked, so that they will know not to wait and improve the system.
I don't see the guy as being a jerk, at all. I can't see anyone gaming a system (not people) as being a jerk, just being smart.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
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.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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 the clause cannot be made effective
* there is not a maximum amount specified nowhere, so that the passenger has no clue what would be the maximum consequence of not taking the last leg
* LH arguments that the tariff difference should apply to the whole round trip, that is the new calculation should be for the route Oslo-Frankfurt-Seattle-Frankfurt-Berlin (instead of Oslo as the last leg as originally booked, the passenger took a separate flight from Frankfurt to Berlin, which was paid separately). The court rejected this argumentation, saying the applicable route would be Oslo-Frankfurt-Seattle-Frankfurt. The fact that the passenger took another flight to Berlin should not play a factor here, as the airline only found out about it because it was booked with the same airline.
In summary, do not book the alternative route with the same airline :)
Sounds strange though that the court would admit the argument that you have to pay more for using less, as a way for the carrier to be able to protect their pricing structure.
As many have already stated the problem is the fact that ticket prices don't follow any sane criteria and you can find much cheaper tickets that have an extra connecting flight somewhere than just the actual flight you want to take.
When we flew to Japan a few years back we used a parody level route to fly. We were a group traveling from Bratislava, Slovakia. Vienna Schwechat airport is about 1 hour away from Bratislava. Budapest Airport is about 2,5 hours. There was (maybe still is) a direct Vienna - Tokyo flight which we wanted to take. However the same flight but with extra connection from Budapest was several hundred euros cheaper which adds up in a group.
So we chose the option from Budapest but chose the connecting flight a day ahead, had a minivan drive us to Budapest, checked in, flew to Vienna, the same minivan took about the same time to get from Budapest to Vienna as the check in and flight took, we got off in Vienna, went back to Bratislava in the van, had a good night sleep at home and the following day went to Vienna and resumed our flight "connection" to Tokyo.
When flying back we did the same thing the guy did, requested to have the baggage checked out in Vienna and simply ignored the connecting flight to Budapest.
The old "sue our savviest customers" trick -- never a good sign.
Fortunately everyone loves airlines and air travel, so they've got good will to burn. Imagine if a widely detested business tried this!
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.
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"
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
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?
There is something very, very wrong with the airline market if it costs less to take more legs.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
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. I see nothing about the passenger incurring a service charge if they fail to board. Perhaps I've overlooked something but a quick reading seems to reveal no such terms.
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.
I've yet to ever see a plane delayed for the benefit of a passenger, especially one with no luggage in the hold.
Precisely because it happens all the time and the cost of delaying even 5 minutes is way more than any single passenger ticket (except possibly first class, but even then it's not worth the trade-off that they'll come in 10 rather than 5 minutes).
Also - do you not have to "check-in" to a flight? Without that, they wouldn't be expecting him at the gate at all. Like millions of passengers every year who don't check in because their taxi didn't arrive on time, family emergencies, their connecting flight was late, they didn't make it through security, etc. etc. etc.
Lufthansa who are doing this in Germany, and United Airlines who tried this in the USA are both members of the Star Alliance.
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.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
https://skiplagged.com/
It will be hard for the airline to argue that it cost them money (i.e. generated a loss) by not flying the passenger on the final leg.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
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.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
This is irrelevant. If they fly the plane empty with no passengers to preserve the slot/move the plane, forcing everyone to get a ticket to the hub, they would make more money than _reducing_ the cost of the ticket when you purchase an extra leg. Your argument provides a motivation to make the extra leg available for free but not for, effectively, paying passengers to take the extra flight.
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.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
If you are going to do this at least book the final leg on a different airline.
Sorry, no mod points for you today, AC.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
someone flying from New York to San Francisco could book a cheaper trip from New York to Lake Tahoe
This is a weird example, seeing as how Lake Tahoe's airport has no commercial flights.
The airlines know different people will pay different amounts for the same flight. They are somewhat monopolists on a given route so they want to charge each customer the most that customer will pay. To do this they try and divide the customers into buckets such as first class, business, economy, or when you buy or if you want to change your flight. It might be that people willing to fly the shorter flight are generally richer and willing to pay more but at the same time it might be worth it to sell a longer flight for less because the people taking the longer flight won't pay as much but they will pay more than the marginal cost of the empty seat..
For more understanding read:
http://www.economicsdiscussion...
In the US, an airline's internal rule has no force of law outside the company itself. Violate one, and the most that can happen is that the company will no longer do business with you and/or will cancel loyalty points they have on account for you. Is the situation legally different in Germany?
Airlines and Restaurants have different reasons for their pricing though. In the restaurant case, it is easier for the kitchen to be making lots of the same thing during busy periods, so they make lunch and dinner time set meals and price them to strongly encourage customers to order a limited range of dishes. You could have safely mentioned to the waiting staff that you were ordering the meal but only wanted the filet, and they would have happily delivered you only part of the special meal, saving the kitchen even more time. In the airline case it is more of a supply-demand equation, they are subject to competition via other hubs for those legs that go minor city -> hub -> other minor city (perhaps with other hubs in between), whereas hub to hub they tend to be able to fill the plane regardless, so can get away with higher pricing on those high demand routes. But while I can see why they are upset at customers outsmarting their pricing tactics, I can't support them having legal recourse, the risk of customers finding and exploiting the holes in their pricing strategy should simply be factored into their pricing equations.
I've read many comments suggesting that there is no cost to the airline if the passenger doesn't take the last leg of the journey, but I think it's possible there is a cost.
(I'm making a few assumptions here, most of which I think are likely/valid but if anyone can disprove this I'm open to learning something new!)
So, we have a passenger flying from A to C with a stopover at B (ie route A=>B=>C). Let's assume A/B/C are in mutually exclusive countries (as they are in this specific example). When you arrive in a different country to the one you departed, you pass through customs/immigration at the airport, unless you're transiting through (which in this case the passenger was supposed to do.) As I understand, the staff who run the customs/immigration checkpoints usually work for the government, not the airports themselves and hence I would expect the government charges the airport for the cost of those staff and hence also then the airport passes on a charge (per passenger) to each airline to process those passengers, which are built into the cost of the ticket.
So, in this case the airline expected the passenger to transit through B and pass through customs/immigration at C and hence paid a fee in advance to airport C to process this passenger. However, the passenger skipped the final flight and passed through customs/immigration at B instead. I would expect that airport B can determine from the passport number (which would be scanned at immigration) which airline (and flight) the passenger flew in on (airlines must submit full passenger manifests, even for passengers transiting through an airport) so airport B knows which airline to charge for processing this passenger. It's possible they may even charge the airline a penalty rate for not pre-paying for the processing of this passenger.
So, now the airline has paid both airports B and C to process the passenger through customs/immigration. You can argue that the airline saved money on fuel by not having the passenger on board the final flight, but who is to say that the amount saved is more than the additional processing cost paid to airport B?
Yes, saves the airline a little bit of money to not have the passenger on board. A number I came across was that for a typical jet airliner each extra 100kg of payload increases fuel burn by about 3kg/hour. I think this number was in the context of long haul flights. Short haul and turboprop aircraft would have somewhat different numbers. I think I saw this number 5 to 10 years ago, so more recent higher efficiency engines likely have a smaller number.
This clearly has consequences for airlines deciding how much fuel to load. They have to take extra fuel beyond what they expect to burn to get to the destination, to allow for contingencies (and because they legally have to.) It is something like an insurance policy: loading an extra 10 tonnes of fuel for a 10 hour flight will cost you 3 tonnes of extra fuel burned, whether you use that reserve or not. Usually you won't, but sometimes it will save your bacon and avoid having to divert to an unexpected airport, and then having to perhaps get hotel rooms for all the passengers and rebook them to their expected destination, plus annoying passengers and having them perhaps never fly with you again. Usually airlines will load the legal minimum (from memory, something like fuel to fly to destination plus fuel to fly from there to the further of the two alternate landing airports plus 30 minutes) but if in-air delays seem likely (e.g. bad weather) they'll load more.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Yesterday I bought a package of two doorknobs with the connecting rod, but I only attached one of them to my door where a knob had broken. Is the doorknob manufacturer going to sue me now?
Last Thursday I bought a happy meal at MacDonalds, but I didn't eat all the fries. Am I going to be sued?
Some of the students in a course I taught last semester didn't attend all the lectures. Can I sue them?
If Lufthansa really wants to penalize people for not using the second half of a connecting ticket they should charge an extra couple €100 up front, to be refunded upon successful completion of the full itinerary.
I though Paradise was in the middle of Las Vegas strip? :)
Right, but they are now providing you a service you wanted MORE than what they sold you. They feel they should be able to charge you MORE for that service, even if it is less service than they sold you.
Obviously, they are a rich corporation, so we should just give them our money, they earned it by being rich.
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.
Yes, but the airlines hate that they don't know you're getting of and are then unable to resell your empty seat.
Just another day in Paradise
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.
Yes, but the airlines hate that they don't know you're getting of and are then unable to resell your empty seat.
Solution - give passengers some incentive to cancel the last leg of the flight instead of suing them. Doesn't have to be cash, give them some frequent flyer mile bonus or a drink coupon for their next flight.
Yes, but the airlines hate that they don't know you're getting of and are then unable to resell your empty seat.
Most connecting flights require EVERYONE to get off and go get on a different aircraft. That's the point of the hub system. Take everyone to a central location and then they self-sort into gates taking them someplace else. They know you got off because EVERYONE gets off. They know you didn't get on the connecting flight because they know who gets on their flights.
The ONLY time they won't know YOU got off is when the flight is actually continuing and continuing passengers don't have to get off. But then, they may not know YOU got off, but when they count the pax they'll figure out SOMEONE got off, and they'll see which seat is empty. And then they'll load a standby pax into it.
Even when you are continuing on the same hardware, they make you get off. I've flown return trips where I was riding back on the exact same airplane, and every time I've had to get off and then get back on.
The airlines aren't stupid. They know how to put people in seats. They have computers to help them.
sometimes that is the cheaper way to fly! airlines want to sell you a cheaper ticket if it stops in multiple places than flying directly
I've done this; an alert (or dastardly?) travel agent pointed out to me I could fly from L.A. to Houston for much less than the quoted prices by booking to a destination further on. It didn't cross my mind we were breaking any laws! Were we? Has any US carrier ever sued?
they are assholes. If I buy item and use it not on purpose - it's on me. I buy calculator, and use it as hammer - it's on me. If it breaks down - oh well, my item i do what i want. If I buy hamburger in MacDonald to go to toilet, am i still supposed to eat hamburger?