FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Interesting Court Decision In Germany - Passenger does not need to fly last leg
Old Feb 12, 2019, 3:32 am
  #96  
memesweeper
 
Join Date: Jan 2016
Location: South East England
Programs: Status with BA Exec Club; KrisFlyer; Hilton Honors; IHG One; Marriott Bonvoy
Posts: 543
Originally Posted by Globaliser
But I don't see why lots of media attention on this would be good news for anyone. If you really think that the long-term effect of Lufthansa losing this case would be cheap business class air fares for all, regardless of market, I have a bridge to sell. And if you really think that long-term effect of cheap business class air fares for all is that everyone can enjoy the current levels of business class service at lower fares, I have more of those bridges.
The consequences of increasing consumer knowledge, and long haul LCCs, and proper enforcement of contract fairness could be far reaching. The hub/spoke network and opaque pricing has served legacy carriers well. More transparent ‘flat’ per sector pricing might mean:

- fewer error fares
- reduced attractiveness of JVs/partnerships/alliances
- less generous FFPs
- direct flights by legacy carriers not to/from hubs
- pressure on APD and it’s overseas equivalents
​​​​​​ - improved competitiveness in the market as a whole

Overall probably not attractive to the average reader here — many of us pride ourselves in exploiting much of what’s under threat. Still, I’m with the consumer law in this issue. Prices going up when you consume less is unjustifiable and unfair from the consumers’ perspective. I packed three of my family members on a back-to-back exEU a while back and — whilst they all cheerfully did it — it’s not economically or environmentally justifiable. It’s the symptom of a broken market (not just in fares, hub slot hogging and taxation play a huge part as well).

I’d speculate a relatively high overall fare for a collection of connecting flights with a discount if you fly the whole collection is probably perfectly fair and legal, but isn’t going to score well on the price comparison/OTA websites so probably won’t be the direction the market moves in.

Again IANAL (not travel agent or airline insider!)
memesweeper is offline