Originally Posted by
Airprox
All that will happen if anything from this is that airlines will put a tick-box on the booking page saying "I agree that I have to use all segments in the order booked otherwise they will be cancelled", just like Lufthansa have done since the German courts ruled the same way.
This is not what LH do and this would not have satisfied the ruling in the Court in the case concerned. What LH booking conditions say is that, if you skip a flight, the fare will be recalculated on the basis of the flights actually flown.
In the case, the court had found that cancelling subsequent flight segments when a segment is not flown constituted an unfair term. The court did recognise, however, that the airline had a legitimate interest in protecting its fare structure. Thus repricing in the light of the itinerary flown might be OK but automatic cancelling of subsequent segments would not be.
The hypothesis of a flight being missed due to events outside the passenger's control adds another twist to the issue and there is an arguable case that repricing in that situation would also be unfair.