Originally Posted by
NickB
But this is precisely what hidden city ticketing is. I'll grant you that airlines do not routinely seek redress in that situation (probably because they think that the cost of pursuing the matter would be excessive) but they nevertheless put that in their T&Cs and have been known in some cases to take other kind of redress and threaten to take legal action.[
Be very careful of what you wish for. The likely net impact of such a move would be to increase fares to make up for the lost income.
As to legal development, the jurisdictions which have been most vocal and active about this are the German courts, which have held that it is illegal to force pax to use flight coupons in a ticket in a specific order. However, and this is a huge however, they nevertheless found that it was OK to charge pax for the cost of the journey with the coupons in the order in which they were used. In effect, thiey are saying that airlines can force you to pay the fare that you would have had to pay had you bought the ticket as flown in the first place.
I wasn't thinking in terms of existing movement in this area, but future movement. With many airlines still not offering one-way fares for anything approaching real world market prices - i.e. the only one-way fares on offer being full Y, no discount fares, - then it would be credible to suggest this was unfair towards the consumer (airlines do need authorisation to povide their services).
As for the "be very carefull of what you wish for", let me just say this. Thouse who think it is ALL about revenue not passenger numbers would be very wrong to think that. Plenty of services would simply not be viable without the people on the cheapies. Nor would many benefits afforded to the airline industry in its present form.
As I said, I'm not talking about existing movement in this area but future movement, I'm not looking to get into a debate about it either, however if I were the airlines, I'd wake up to modern europe before you are forced to, you need to offer one way fares at sensible prices, and <some thing else I have removed>, as you are currently open to question on ...several grounds.
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Anyway, back to railways, the £12.50 London to York types of fares are not really comparable to the airline situation. They are promotional fares.
Personally, for the level of subsidy going in, and the higher level that ought to be going in, I think if you can get a £12.50 ticket from London to York, and it is sheduled to stop at a station in between, you should have the right to leave the service there, without furhter penalty.
The railway pricing model in the UK is still at least one distinct step from where it needs to be to consitute a real alternative to private transport. And getting people onto that alternative whenever it suits them is far more important.