
Lufthansa Sues Hidden City Ticketholder for Throwing His Ticket - mchannon
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/lufthansa-sues-passenger-scli-intl/index.html
======
goodells
This is anecdotal, but I had an experience where I was flying from LaGuardia
to Madison, WI with a layover in Chicago. The last leg of the flight from
Chicago to Madison was delayed by several hours, to the point where it would
be significantly faster for my boyfriend to drive down from Madison, pick me
up at the airport in Chicago, and drive me back. I don't recall which airline
I was using at the time, but the gate agent told me that it was their policy
to refuse to pull someone's checked luggage if someone didn't "want" to
complete the last leg of the journey, but if I told someone that I was not
feeling well and wished to end the trip early due to health reasons, that
would be the easiest way to do it. So that's what I did - I went up to a
different gate of the same airline, told them I was sick and would not be
getting on the connecting flight, and the luggage was downstairs in a special
area of the baggage claim within 20 minutes. It felt like being in grade
school and telling the nurse I was sick to get a day off...

~~~
monksy
That's pretty weird because you had a schedule change. Usually, they're more
helpful during those. That should have been marked as an vol pax reroute or
the like.

~~~
jonhohle
Assuming it wasn’t weather related, it sounds like the delay probably made OP
eligible for some type of comp as well. The round trip from Chi to Mad is
around 4 hours (depending on o’hare or midway). Often airlines will have a
policy of comping if the delay results in arrival more than 3 hours after
originally scheduled (and in the EU, is the law!).

~~~
monksy
There's no requirement for comp for delays in the US.
([https://www.transportation.gov/individuals/aviation-
consumer...](https://www.transportation.gov/individuals/aviation-consumer-
protection/flight-delays-cancellations)) EU261 only applies if you're flying
to or from, or within the EU.

------
kevindong
Airline pricing drives me insane and is what happens when you take price
discrimination/revenue optimization to the (often idiotic) extreme.

It's very much possible for a one way flight to cost more than a round trip
flight that includes the one way flight. For instance, a one way ticket on
Delta flight #92 going from JFK to TXL at 8:39pm on May 15, 2019 costs $2,902
[0]. But if you add on a return flight (which includes the original DL 92
flight), the price drops to $957 [1].

[0]:
[https://www.google.com/flights#flt=/m/02_286./m/0156q.2019-0...](https://www.google.com/flights#flt=/m/02_286./m/0156q.2019-05-15.JFKTXL0DL92;c:USD;e:1;a:-WW,-DY,-D8,-DI;sd:1;t:b;tt:o;sp:2.USD.290170)

[1]:
[https://www.google.com/flights#flt=/m/02_286./m/0156q.2019-0...](https://www.google.com/flights#flt=/m/02_286./m/0156q.2019-05-15.JFKTXL0DL92*/m/0156q./m/02_286.2019-05-22.TXLJFK0DL93;c:USD;e:1;a:-WW,-DY,-D8,-DI*-WW,-DY,-D8,-DI;sd:1;t:b;sp:2.USD.168973*2.USD.95673)

~~~
html5web
Are you searching for specific airlines?

Here's another option:
[https://www.google.com/flights#flt=/m/02_286./m/0156q.2019-0...](https://www.google.com/flights#flt=/m/02_286./m/0156q.2019-05-15.JFKMAN0MT2853~MANTXL1U21895;c:USD;e:1;a:-WW,-DY,-D8,-DI;sd:1;t:b;tt:o;sp:2.USD.36742)

~~~
kevindong
Yes. I picked that particular flight to illustrate my point.

The budget airlines don't play games like the legacy airlines (or rather at
least to not as heavy of a degree), which is refreshing.

------
monksy
I hope that Lufthansa loses big for this. Extorting a person to complete the
journey is just wrong.

This doesn't surprise me one bit from my experience with Lufthansa. They love
to blame the customer for everything, especially when they (LH) screw up.

EDIT: This is a great example of where a corporation should suffer criminal
charges. But given Germany's protection of their flag carrier.. it won't
happen.

~~~
DannyBee
No, it's not extortion, it's breach of contract. If he didn't' want to perform
the contract, he shouldn't have taken it on.

This is not a great example of anything else, despite your hyperbole.

~~~
themaninthedark
So, when the inverse happens and an airline overbooks a flight and someone
gets bumps that should also count as a breach of contract and all airlines
should have to pay airfare plus compensation right? And this should apply to
volunteers as well.

Then we should also look at departure times, how often has a flight been
delayed? Many people count on getting where they are going on time. That
should also count as a breach of contract as well.

Edit: To take this to the absurd, you have to pay to make any changes to your
ticket at after a certain point in time i.e. name. So when you receive the
ticket and it has a gate listed, is that also part of the contract? I am not
allowed to change anything printed there without paying, why should they be
allowed?

Or do we say that things happen and we allow systems to be lenient?

~~~
detaro
It should count as breach of contract if it's against a provision in the
contract. If there's a provision for it in the contract, the next question is
if it is valid or not (e.g. compensation for late flights is defined by laws
in many places, so airlines can't just not offer it), which is where a law (or
a different interpretation of existing law) restricting this would start.

------
zaroth
I’ve heard of airlines canceling the _return_ flight if you skip a segment in
the outbound leg. And that makes sense if their terms lay that out ahead of
time.

I’ve also heard of airlines canceling “overlapping” tickets which would not be
possible unless you skipped a leg. I’ve been hit by that when trying to book
multiple flights for a business trip where I didn’t know exactly when I would
be coming back, and the advance fare ticket was a small fraction of the cost
of a refundable ticket.

Complaining that a customer skips a final segment on the return flight is poor
sport. Except for one thing — if they have you in the system because you
started your return flight earlier in the day, and now at your connecting
flight they are calling final boarding again and again waiting for a passenger
that never shows, it holds up the entire plane and is a drag on their
resources trying to page you and track you down.

I can understand airlines refusing future service to someone who does this to
them repeatedly. A 5 year ban or terminating their frequent flier account or
something along that lines would seem appropriate.

The ban might be hard to enforce however since it’s not like Amazon where they
can blacklist your address.

~~~
NedIsakoff
Really? That's an international flight and you put in your passport number.

~~~
zaroth
Good point! That seems like the best way to handle this. Getting blacklisted
from the airline for causing delay by skiplegging is totally fair play IMO.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
Except it's not if they refuse to listen when you tell them that you won't be
taking the last leg.

------
Nasrudith
Really there is an easy solution to this - don't have such batshit pricing
structures that longer trips taken partway leaving empty seats is cheaper!

If it is cheaper for them to head to a third city first instead of directly
just have the prices reflect it so it is x to layover and y to destination
which is less than z a direct flight - if it is even offered.

~~~
everdev
I can't think of another business (outside of promotional activities) that
requires you to accept something you don't want to reduce the price.

It does seem like a breakdown in their pricing logic rather than anything
injurious the passenger did.

~~~
lysp
> I can't think of another business (outside of promotional activities) that
> requires you to accept something you don't want to reduce the price.

I've done it occasionally on shopping sites.

Product A - $48 Shipping - $10

Free shipping for orders over $50.

So I'll pick a random $2 item that I don't want and save $8 on the final
price.

~~~
tomp
But that’s because shopping sites are retarded. Obviously the economically
sensible (and environmentally friendly) solution is to only charge
min(shipping fee, free shipping cutoff - current price).

------
dabeeeenster
I missed an outbound leg of a return flight from Sydney to London 15 years
ago. When I got to Heathrow to get my flight back, they told me the ticket was
void because I hadn't taken the outbound leg, then charged me 3k GBP for a
'standard ticket'.

I spent about 4 months arguing with BA about it and eventually got most of the
ticket refunded.

I still think about that.

------
lutoma
After reading the German court document linked in the CNN article (not a
lawyer), it appears charging customers extra for not taking a leg of their
flight is actually legal in the eyes of the court. They also cite a decision
of the highest ordinary court in Germany (BGH) to that effect. I find that
quite worrying.

The lawsuit was only struck down because of a lack of transparency in the
pricing, as the customer has no way to check the fare they will end up with if
they skip a leg. So if they publish prices for skipped legs, it would be a-ok
I guess.

~~~
craftyguy
Legality and ethical correctness are not always the same thing. Just because
the court doesn't see any conflict with current law doesn't mean it is the
right thing to do. In that case, there should be a change of law.

------
fanzhang
> A Berlin district court dismissed the lawsuit in December, but Lufthansa's
> spokesperson confirmed to CNN that the company has "already filed the appeal
> against the decision."

So basically this lawsuit has already been dismissed by a lower court, and but
Lufthansa is appealing. The entire dynamics here seem like Lufthansa is
unlikely to win and even if it does the amount it is claiming ($3K?) is way
lower than legal costs, but the publicity of the lawsuit is the entire point
they're making. A version of SLAPP, if you will.

~~~
detaro
Note that the court didn't find that asking for money in this case was wrong,
but that Lufthansa didn't justify the specific amount properly.

------
noneeeed
Can anyone explain to me why these flights end up being cheaper in the first
place?

I know that airline pricing can be quite odd, but charging less for two
flights than for one just seems to defy logic. What am I missing?

~~~
gsnedders
> I know that airline pricing can be quite odd, but charging less for two
> flights than for one just seems to defy logic. What am I missing?

This is quite common: in this case, Seattle to Frankfurt has a limited number
of direct flights (Lufthansa and Condor only), and people are willing to pay a
premium for direct flights; Seattle to Oslo has no direct flights, so
Lufthansa is in competition with every other airline that has a hub along a
reasonable route (at the very least: KLM/Air France, BA, SAS, Icelandair), and
as such there's more competition there.

~~~
noneeeed
Aah, right, that makes a lot of sense.

------
shaki-dora
I guess this headline makes one want to grab the pitchfork, but I don’t know
if we will end in a better place if carriers are barred from following the
pricing strategy at the core of this.

LH is simply routing passengers like IP packages, where sometimes it may be
more economical to, for example, go the long way around to get to the
destination. In those cases, they want to charge you the (lower) price of your
trip’s usefulness to you, irregardless of the (longer) route it took you to
get there.

Barring this practice will just make those flights more expensive, or
potentially reduce competition on some rote that a carrier like LH does not
service with direct flights.

The narrower court case is simply a matter of contract law. Sure, there need
to be exceptions for sudden sickness or actual changes of plans, but those are
factual questions, not ones of law at issue here. I’m no fan of naive contract
fetishism upholding the right to sign away your first-born n &Cs. But this
issue here really does not strike me as overtly one-sided.

------
martin_a
I don't get the problem here. He paid for the full flight, what's the problem
with him not taking the connecting flight to the final destination?

------
torpfactory
Can someone explain the economic rationale to force passengers to fly more for
a cheaper ticket from the airlines perspective? I understand the breach of
contract arguments but why sell tickets priced this way in the first place?

~~~
jonhohle
Supply & demand plus transportation logistics, cross promotion, etc. Imagine
Las Vegas has an agreement with airlines to subsidize airfair in return for a
certain volume of inbound humans. The airline optimizes logistics, and finds
that from your city to Vegas wouldn’t result in a full flight, but splitting
travelers to higher volume hubs allows them to consolidate for a full flight,
maximizing thier subisidy compared to their outlay.

They don’t care that the passenger is connecting in this case, they are not
what is being optized for. However, if the passenger terminates their trip at
the hub, the airline may lose the subsidy making the entire trip a loss for
that passenger, despite using less resources on that one particular human.

I don’t know if those are the types of arrangmenta that exist, but it would be
hard for me to imagine a scenario where cities that rely heavily on tourism
aren’t spending money to encourage airlines to bring more people.

The other part of that is to the customer/passenger, there is a hidden shadow
transaction on their flight with a third party. In other forms of logistics,
this is common (last mile delivery by USPS, for example), but I don’t think
most people like to think that they are thought of as cargo.

------
html5web
This is so stupid! What if passenger changed his plan that day? Do you sue
every single passenger who misses his/her flights?

Don't use Lufthansa's services.

~~~
NedIsakoff
He probably booked the other ticket in advance as well.

------
linkmotif
If he bought the second leg in advance, doesn’t it show that he entered the
first contract in bad faith, against their terms of service?

Personally I don’t get the whole concept of suing your customers. I would just
ban him if I was Lufthansa.

------
thomaslangston
My guess is this might be similar to how company's sue people for trademark
violations, even when they are not doing any direct damage to the brand i.e.
to protect themselves from future legal liability. If too many customers use
the hidden city in a foreign airline flight, they might be found not be in
compliance with route agreements.

Some background on the subject:
[https://youtu.be/thqbjA2DC-E](https://youtu.be/thqbjA2DC-E)

~~~
paulgb
Thanks for posting that video. I feel like every 10 seconds I'm learning
something interesting and new about a subject I'd never really given much
thought to!

------
addicted
With airlines checking in your bags to your final destination, isn't the
"hidden city" trick a massive problem for others?

What's likely to happen is if the passenger doesn't show up, the flight will
be delayed because their bags need to be unloaded.

~~~
exhilaration
You don't check in bags if you're using this method.

~~~
vinni2
I have asked them not to check in my bag all the way several times. And
Lufthansa had complied my request every time.

------
DannyBee
Assuming they write the contract right, this is pretty standard breach of
contract, regardless of the propriety of suing your customers. (Skiplegged.com
was thrown out for lack of jurisdiction, because United wasn't suing the
people breaching the contract, only the people enabling it. Here, Lufthansa is
suing the right people)

Hacker news never seems to like contracts that don't let it do whatever they
want, but the person paid and agreed to do a thing, and didn't do it.

The fact that y'all think that thing is stupid is irrelevant. Don't make
contracts you aren't going to keep.

~~~
admax88q
What makes you think that by buying a ticket you're now under contract to
board the plane?

~~~
teraflop
When you buy a ticket on Lufthansa you're required to agree to their
conditions of carriage, which include this language:

> 5.6. A service charge may be payable by any passenger who:

> 5.6.1. fails to arrive for departure at the airport or any other point of
> departure by the time we have specified (or if no time has actually been
> specified, with insufficient time to permit completion of official
> formalities and departure procedures) and, as a consequence, does not use
> the seat for which a reservation has been made

------
gberger
Would the situation be any different if the man had booked the Frankfurt-
Berlin leg with a different airline?

Well, for starters, Lufthansa wouldn't have any way to know that the passenger
flew to Berlin; for all it knew, he could have just missed his flight to Oslo.
But if somehow this came to Lufthansa's knowledge, would they still have a
valid case against him?

~~~
detaro
That they included the Berlin leg into their calculation is one of the reasons
the court rejected the claim, presumably the other one (no clear basis for how
they calculated the price they assumed) would still stand.

------
vinni2
I have done this many times (including with Lufthansa) but I would ask them to
check in the bag only until where I want to stop the trip. I don’t know if
they wasted time waiting for me during those times.

------
jka
Not called out in the comments here yet, but as per both the terms of the case
provided in the linked article, and as per reality - these trips may involve
international border crossings.

~~~
gpvos
Okay, and what would be different depending on whether an international border
is involved or not?

~~~
dgaudet
taxes, airport fees, etc.

------
lawlessone
How can they force someone onto an airplane?

~~~
detaro
They can't, and that's not what they're trying to do.

~~~
monksy
You're right, they're not trying to use physical force, they're trying to
extort him to do so.

~~~
detaro
It's a pretty big gap between "trying to enforce unpopular contractual
agreements", which is clearly their right to attempt, even if the court found
they didn't do it well enough and it's going to be a PR mess (which I hope
it'll be) , to "extortion", which is criminal. The court didn't even find that
the clause in the terms of service is invalid.

~~~
monksy
Explain this to me:

A person doesn't get on the flight. The airline can go after him for inaction.
The whole transaction is based on purchases of services from LH. The customer
elected not to accept all services detailed in the transaction.

Should you expect the grocery store to sue you for food waste?

Definition of extortion: the practice of obtaining something, especially
money, through force or threats.

~~~
detaro
The analogy is hard to make work, but if the supermarket ran different prices
for people that do not waste food and sold it to me under terms that require
me to not waste food, then yes, that's something that might happen. You then
can get into a legal debate if the terms were clear enough for me to
understand in front of a court. Here apparently the court was of the opinion
that the price difference between the tickets is well-known enough to accept
the terms.

By that definition, any instance where someone is sued for money is extortion,
that's clearly not how it works.

------
ashildr
If you order the Lufthansa Burger with fries you better finish all the fries -
or else you’ll go to bed without desserts in the future AND they sue you...

------
BuildTheRobots
If you're in the UK, then this is completely valid on a rail journey.

If outbound then you can leave and come back in as long as it's the same day
(rail days start at 4am). If it's an open return, then you have the entire
month to split up and resume your journey. There's nothing to stop you getting
off half way through and not returning.

Edit: Apologies, this does depend on ticket type, but should apply to most
off-peak and super off peak and open return tickets:

"Break of journey is allowed on the outward and return portions of Off-Peak
tickets unless otherwise indicated by a restriction shown against the ticket's
validity code.

You may start, break and resume, or end your journey at any intermediate
station along the route of travel on Off-Peak tickets unless the ticket
restriction for the journey you are making does not allow it. If you intend to
start, break and resume, or end your journey at any intermediate station,
please call 03457 48 49 50 to check if it is available on your specific
journey."

[http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/ticket_types/46590...](http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/ticket_types/46590.aspx)

~~~
stewartm
Errr ... [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-
england-11420790](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-11420790)

~~~
gsnedders
Right, it actually depends on the terms of the ticket. Advance tickets, which
are linked to a specific train (or sequence of trains), don't allow you to
break your journey or start/end short.

