cityflyer369

This is typically stated in the fare rules, not the conditions of carriage.

orbitmic

I can't direct you to the specific threads because I don't have time to look for them, but as brunos says, some of the threads on various airlines fora were rather specific in the details, including, (1) cases of people reporting their TA having been sent memo debits, (2) reference to an article in Business Traveller about a European airline cancelling a member's FF account and all miles earned because of him/her repeatedly skipping the final segment of his/her trips (as well as airline's own comments and Business Traveller's editors' comments that the airline seemed entitled to do so), and (3) reference to people explaining that their FF account was indeed audited and that they understood that skipped last segments was what had triggered that, and the result of vast amounts of miles withdrawn from their account.

Now of course, these are not court cases which you can externally verify, but they are all specific statements by people talking of their own experience on FT and in reputable magazines, airlines' answers and magazine's comments after looking into the people's cases and contacting the airline. I would say that it is at least as evidenced as 99% of what is discussed/commented upon on FT.

In the same threads you will also find a description of the logic which details why the argument you make that this is just equivalent to not using something that you bought or skipping a course in a set menu is probably NOT legally tenable (in a nutshell, because IATA rules and CoC systematically and consistently state that you don't buy a series of coupons, which would indeed give you a right to use some and skip others, but a full itinerary from point of origin to point of arrival and/or return, which means that if you fly JFK-CDG instead of JFK-LHR -- regardless of whether your routing was via CDG or not -- you are basically helping yourself to the lobster while you paid for the cod). This is how plane tickets are conceived and sold, how they are protected (e.g. by EU regulations), and how they are enforced (for instance in the case of reroutings). The German court ruling was indeed not about a last segment but nonetheless fully support that logic: somebody bought an LH ticket with connections but skipped an outbound segment. The airline cancelled the rest of the itinerary and it went to court. The court ruled that the airline did not have the right to cancel a passenger's itinerary but was entitled to reprice the ticket according to the itinerary flown by the passenger. This suggests that they agree this is no 'set menu' or else there would be no reason to let one skip dessert but not the starter! Note that you are allowed in any case to not consume what you bought (ie not fly at all).

Would airlines sue for someone skipping the last coupon? No, they would be stupid to do so as it would invariably cost them more money (plus reputational capital) than it would bring considering the cost of legal action. Instead, they choose, "easier" ways such as threatening to refuse to return one's luggage until difference has been paid (see irishguy28's point above, although I personally doubt that such 'hostage strategy' would be legal), sending TAs debit memos (if TA refuses, then sums will this time typically be large enough to justify legal action) or cancel FF accounts and or significant amounts of miles (specifying in their own T&C that not behaving properly including not flying all coupons in the order they were booked can cause this makes it very easy to them).

ok986

Sorry for asking too much, but where can I find these? I found none on the ticket or the KLM web where I booked it, even when clicking on the "more conditions" link...

Xandrios

I believe you can request them (Phone, email, social media) based on the fare code that is mentioned at the link you tried. Another way would be to use an online TA, as they often have an option to query for the full fare rules when you are searching for a flight.

Not necessarily. For example a restrictive outbound leg, but fully flexible inbound leg, allows somebody to depart on a set date, but return whenever fits best.

orbitmic

Actually, in a way, it could be argued to be the other way round:

KLM and AF don't generally offer cheap singles so if you want to get, say, a G fare (non refundable, changeable on with a hefty penalty) at €20+tax (say €100 each way, so €220 all inclusive) it will have to be on a return ticket while if you want to buy a single, you could get that on a B (fully flexible and refundable) far at say €500+tax return (ie 700 all inclusive, or €250+tax single, ie 350 all inclusive).

Now let us imagine that you buy a return with outbound in G and return in B, which you would thus pay at half of each round trip fare, so €260+tax (460 all inclusive). If KLM allowed you to then decide that you can cancel the return part of your trip because it is in B and fully refund it, it would mean that you will have effectively been allowed to buy a single for €10+tax (110 all inclusive) which is a fare that absolutely doesn't exist in the example above as there is no way of flying for less than €220 (return non refundable) or €250 (single refundable). Thus, KLM would be unfair by allowing that as it would encourage crafty travellers to 'avoid' fare rules by adding a dummy fully flexible return always intended to be cancelled just for the purposes of creating a much cheaper single than what actually exists.

Finally, most people who end up getting outbound and inbound in different classes typically do it not because of wanting differing fare conditions but just because the cheaper class is not available and they therefore need to book one of the two directions in a higher fare bucket.

Guy Betsy

That will never happen.

If you're not there by the time the "gate closes time indicated", you don't get to go. The flight won't be held for you. They certainly haven't held any flight for me when I'm late...

Besides if you were legitimately late for a flight (ie missed bus/train), and miss your flight, what are they gonna do really?

irishguy28

I had completely forgotten about that article - but I did read it at the time!

Here it is!

The loss of 3 million miles in any scheme has got to hurt.

irishguy28

It depends on the airline and the circumstances.

Air France is known for holding flights and/or doing other things when this proves the best solution for connecting passengers.

(Actually, it would be quite funny if someone had booked a tight connection at CDG with the intention of skipping the onward flight, only to find an Air France agent waiting for them, and only for them, to speed them through the airport to their next flight, which was being held specifically for them...).

jsfr

As a regular non-return user, I should clarify that I don't do it deliberately as a strategy I book my flights 2-3 weeks in advance where possible, and meetings/plans change, hence often having to throw away the last segment and re-book something else.

The savings by booking non-modifiable in advance are worth occasionally having to throw a ticket away. Nothing wrong with that - the difference in Fare between modifiable and non-modifiable is like taking out insurance or not, up to the customer to choose whether to take the "risk" of plans changing at the time of booking.

Doing this for about 10% of flights means, that I don't "play tricks" on 90% of my flights - I'm probably a good and very profitable client for AF (80-100 segments a year). Are they going to p***s me and my employer off because sometimes my plans change? I don't think so.

In fact on occasions when I have discussed this with AF staff and booking agents, they know this is happening, all the time, and it is just factored into their pricing/yield strategies. One person from AF even told me once that they have a significantly higher number of "No-Shows" on Sundays simply because of the number of "dummy returns" that are booked on Sundays as that is where the cheapest flights are.

Personally I don't do this on Long Haul flights, only because then I fly Business which is fairly flexible anyway (and always on other carriers with flat-beds).

orbitmic

Thanks for finding it! If I remember correctly, the paper version even had a quote from the airline in question refering to its own T&C as accounts would be closed to if not flying all coupons in sequences as this would be considered misconduct but i may have got confused!

Xandrios

KLM has held a flight for me once (Short connection in PRG, inbound CSA flight was delayed). So while not a guarantee, it does happen sometimes

You are probably right in that this might not happen when it is your first segment of the day, but when connecting they know that you are on your way...and they will wait in case its just a few minutes.

jsfr

Commercially speaking, that is a very brave move from that particular airline (guessing SK or maybe LH).

But, does one case - which we don't have the full details of, make a rule or an exception?

In my own company we all tend to remember the one time things go wrong, and not the 99 times things go right....

irishguy28

They perhaps saw it differently - more along the lines of cutting their losses.

They saw (whether rightly or wrongly - though perhaps rightly, given the passenger's letter) that they were losing a substantial amount of the fare that should have been paid, based on the passenger's repeated travel patterns.

You can disagree, of course, but they seem to have decided that they no longer wanted his business, and also cancelled his miles (thereby removing their liability for providing further service when he finally wished to redeem those miles).



No-one is claiming that everyone who drops all or part of a return are going to be hounded down, charged for a one-way ticket, have their frequent flyer account suspended, etc etc.

The question upstream was what would happen if a return was dropped. The consensus was that, it it's a one-off there will be absolutely no consequences. I have not seen one single post suggesting otherwise.

The later question was - can anyone point to any incident of any trouble coming from such a thing? As we have shown, if people insist on mis-using tickets (in terms of the airline definition of misuse) - and throwing away the final sector repeatedly on what seems to always be the exact same itinerary - is really begging for trouble.

orbitmic

But again it is not just one case. Look through the BA forum and look for references to account audits and you'll find multiple examples of people claiming that they think that missing several last segments is what triggered the audits and/or what was picked up with deletions of very significant number of miles or even account deletion. It is not a single occurrence but multiple ones.

Of course you could say that we don't have explicit examples (to my knowledge) relating to AF/KL and it is perfectly possible that AF/KL has not jumped on that bandwagon at this stage, but it certainly doesn't mean that it never will. I remember a time not long ago when all airlines were lenient on luggage weight, then some started enforcing it (like BA) but AF was rightly reputed for still not caring about luggage weight. They would systematically let you check in 10kg more than your allowance. Then came a time when, as they were losing money, someone must have said "we need to start recouping money when people have excess luggage because we are losing potential revenue by not charging for excess luggage" and they are now in line with others on this. Did it upset some people who used to get away with this? Yes of course, but people got used to it and now pay more attention to how much they pack, plus in any case, since the other airlines became tougher on this there was no comparative disadvantage at enforcing since people who would fly with another airline as a gesture would soon find that they were treated the exact same.

I think it will be the exact same with this. You mention throwing away 10% of your final legs, this is not negligible and in theory the fares for the trips you ended up flying 'would' have been much more than what you paid. Maybe - and I sure hope so for you of course - they will let you get away with it, but if they don't what will you say or do? If they tell you 'sorry Mr jsfr but that is 10 trips over the last two years where you did not fly the whole itinerary and this is not allowed, so we will unfortunately have to delete the miles you accrued on the part of the itineraries you flew, say 50,000 miles. If you do it again we may even delete your FB account' Your employer won't care, and you will be upset but soon you'll look round and will see that BA would have probably be even meaner and considering the 'mood' LH seems to be in, if they haven't yet moved in that direction, they will undoubtedly do so very quickly!

So my guess is that the majority of people to whom it will happen will be angry for a few days and will then resume flying normally and try to maximise the cases when they comply with their original booking or accept to pay a hefty change penalty (almost all tickets are changeable on AF-KL at the moment) if their plans change. So AF-KL will have likely gained some money by deleting miles (they keep saying there are far too many in circulation) and if they lose a few really angry customers on the way, they will benefit at the same time through others changing their behaviour. I also think that they would likely mostly strike the most severe offenders, so you may not be directly concerned with your 10% missed last segments but keep hearing more and more of people who are and may be more careful pro-actively as a result.

Anyway, again, I completely accept that many people disagree, think that this will never happen and will continue to do so, that's perfectly fine by me, but I would at least certainly always refrain from advising anyone else from making a habit of missing last segments repeatedly. Computer systems can now pick up so easily if asked to, clearly some airlines have started looking for these patterns more specifically, and while everyone is entirely free to choose how much risk they want to take, I don't think that it is factually accurate to say that we do not have examples of airlines acting in a punitive way in cases of repeated offending nor that these examples are only an exception any more.

erik123

They never have and likely never will - no matter the blanket assumptions made here.

AF/KL sales agents actively encourage throw-away ticketing when asked.