Slashdot Mirror
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
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
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.
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?
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
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
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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