Originally Posted by
carnarvon
Because part of the cost is the flexibility. A non flexible non refundable C costs less to the airline than a fully flexible Y. If the Y PAX does not show up, the airline gets nada. The C ticket fare is in the airline pocket in all cases.
One must account for waste/rejects in the cost calculation of a product or a service.
OK, if this is what you meant, then I had not missed anything: you seem to be confusing cost and revenue: it is on the revenue side of the equation that the difference lies rather than on the cost side (well, in truth, there is a small difference on the cost side as well, but it seems to me that it is unlikely to match the cost differential of carrying a pax in Y and in C).
But, as you say, this is irrelevant so I'll leave that aside.
Originally Posted by
carnarvon
My argument is that in a contractual relationship, the obligations of the seller (or service provider) and the buyer are not the same.
The seller has the obligation to supply the goods or service and the buyer has the obligation to pay.
If both comply, that is it.
The seller has the obligation to supply, but the buyer does not have in any way the obligation to fly. If he has paid, the service is his and he does what he wants.
With due respect, this is, from a legal perspective, complete and utter tosh of the highest order.
One can put (subject to the caveats I mentioned in my earlier post re, for instance, consumer protection legislation) whatever one wants into a contract: that is one aspect of what freedom of contract is all about. We are no longer in the Antiquity and we do not operate under a system of nominate contracts with pre-defined contents as in Roman Law (and even then, even Roman law recognised innominate contracts).
The idea that a contract relating to a supply of service cannot contain a clause requiring the recipient of services to do anything other than pay the price of the service would suggest that you really have no clue whatsoever about the law of contract.
The fact that the seller would have like to charge more if he had known that etc. is BS.
it is not that the seller "would have liked to charge more if he had known". The supplier has already told the purchaser in advance in the contract that the price will be different if the passenger chooses not to fly the return or indeed to vary any other element in the booked and ticketed itinerary. I am still waiting for a convincing explanation as to why such a clause would not hold.