Originally Posted by
Globaliser
Have you tried asking a National Express coach driver to turn off the motorway and make an extra unscheduled stop at the nearest town that you choose to drop you off? That's the road equivalent of asking to get off a NYC-AMS flight at a LON airport.
You keep talking about mincabs. However, as I've already pointed out, BA runs a service which is much more akin to a bus service.
Originally Posted by
Globaliser
Sorry, the line of the discussion has got obscured.
The question was whether, if you are on a bus between scheduled stops, you are entitled to demand that the bus driver deviate and pull into a town en route and let you off, on the basis that you don't want to be there any more and he would otherwise be guilty of false imprisonment. The answer to that is clearly no, and nobody seems to dispute that.
The same applies to the question whether, if you're on a NYC-AMS flight, you're entitled to demand that the pilot divert to a LON airport and let you off, with him being guilty of false imprisonment if he simply continues to the scheduled destination. Again, the answer is obviously no.
But why are you not entitled to demand this? The answer is because your contract is for carriage from NYC to AMS on the aircraft, or from one scheduled stop to another on the bus. That's why you have no entitlement to demand to make a shorter journey.
And it's the same even if your ticket includes a change of aircraft in London, or an intermediate scheduled stop on the bus. If your contract is for carriage from A to C, and carriage from A to the intermediate stop at B would have been more expensive, and you've agreed not to do that (as either the bus company's or airline's conditions might provide), then you're equally not entitled to demand to terminate at B and to get your checked baggage back there.
There are a few distractions and red herrings that have crept into the discussion. Drawing some of them together:
- the NYC-LON direct flight; the National Express coach travelling from A to B on the motorway; the bus travelling between stops. These aren't illuminating parallels, for the simple reason that there is no practical opportunity to divert the plane, stop on the hard shoulder, and buses don't stop between stops. But that's nothing to do with the discussion here.
- the NYC-LON-AMS flight; the National Express coach travelling from A to B to C with a stop at B; the bus travelling from stops at A, B and C; any cab/taxi on a road where it is capable of stopping. Here there is no practical bar to the passenger stopping their journey at one of the intermediate planned stopping points. The false imprisonment point arose in this context, if the driver sought to drag you back on board to complete the journey you originally intended. So if there is such a bar to the passenge disembarking early, it has to be a legal one.
The para commencing "And it's the same" rests entirely on the caveat "and you've agreed to do that" - in short, you've promised that you will travel from A to B to C. Therein lies the essential difference of views between the two sides, IMO: when you buy a ticket, do you promise the airline that you will use it - thereby assuming the burden of an obligation to the airline enforceable by it, or you you buy a right to travel exerciseable (or not) as you wish? Evidently to some one or other of these two alternatives is blindingly obvious, but it seems that it is not the same alternative that is blindingly obvious to all.
For my part, the question of whether a passenger assumes an obligation to travel, or acquires a right to travel is fundamental. Perhaps obviously, I favour the latter (the ability to be a "no show", or disembark prior to take off in accordance with the contract of carriage would otherwise be called into question).
The reason, also obviously, why it is important to get the "first principles" straight outside a contractual matrix is that it defines the natural and logical starting intentions of the parties. If the contract wording, properly understood, is said to deviate from this starting point, one would expect to find clear and unambiguous words to that effect. Conversely, if no such words are used, the obvious inference is that the parties did not intend to deviate from the starting point by much, if at all.
Originally Posted by
Globaliser
I'd advise you not to speculate about whether AMS-LON-NYC fares are profitable or not. That's not a binary question and there's no single straightforward answer to it.
I'd be (genuinely) interested to have further insight into this: the suggestion that profitable/unprofitable is not a binary question surprises me. But in the absence of hard evidence, speculation is the best any of us have.