Lawsuit Calls Delta’s Best Fare Guarantee “Fraudulent”

The suit contends that Delta charges more for multi-leg flights than they would for the individual segments.

A lawsuit filed on August 7 in the Eastern District of Wisconsin Federal Court alleges that Delta Air Lines “employs sophisticated software” to keep Delta.com users from seeing the lowest available fares for connecting flights.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of a Wisconsin woman, claims that the software “allows a dynamic segmentation of customers, taking into consideration their characteristics, the point-of-sale used and any connecting flight data, in order to better capture their willingness-to-pay,” all of which in effect circumvents Delta’s Best Fare Guarantee. Attorneys for the plaintiff assert that this software artificially “marries” legs of connecting flights, denying passengers the best published fare on flights with a stopover.

The issue can perhaps best be understood as a flight literally being more than the sum of its parts. In this case, the plaintiff paid more for her flight from Outgamie County Regional Airport (ATW) in Appleton, Wis., to Sarasota-Brandenton International Airport (SRQ) in Sarasota, Fla., with a connecting flight at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), than she would have for two separate flights, one from ATW to ATL and one from ATL to SRQ. The lawsuit contends that she was therefore not offered the best fare through Delta.com.

Of course, the opposite can be true as well. For example, a flight from Cleveland Hopkins International Airport (CLE) to John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) might be less expensive than a flight from CLE to Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT), even if the CLE to JFK flight makes a stop in PIT. To keep flyers from taking advantage of this quirk, most airlines will invalidate return tickets if passengers are not present for each leg of connecting flights.

Delta’s Best Fare Guarantee is not completely untrustworthy. The lawsuit acknowledges that on nonstop trips, Delta.com does offer the lowest available fare. The suit contends that this is proof that the airline is intentionally hiding the lowest fare for connecting flights. The filing with the court also alleges that Delta.com repeatedly used an error message to prevent the purchase of lower price fares as separate segments of a connecting flight.

The plaintiff has asked the court’s permission to pursue the case as a class-action suit including Delta passengers in Wisconsin and across the U.S. who may have been damaged by the airline’s pricing scheme.

The plaintiff’s attorneys used fare and tariff information published by Delta to the Global Distribution System (GDS), a service for the travel industry, to compare fares offered by Delta.com. The lawyers accessed the GDS information through the paid subscriber service ExpertFlyer.com finding published fares that ranged between $25 to $151 less expensive each way than fares available on Delta.com.

Subscribers to ExpertFlyer.com were notified on Sunday that the airline has ordered the site to remove “any information on ExpertFlyer pertaining to Delta.”

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