irishguy28

As I've shown you just a few posts up, they will charge you (€225) to return your baggage if you break your journey early.

Derbex

I am not surprised about Lufthansa! The Germans think they can rule the world! If you take them to court, there's no way they can get money out of your pockets, I would never pay such threts.
Airlines must find a way to compete with low cost airlines with new ideas, not threatning their clients!

carnarvon

Talking about taking them to court, one thing comes up to my mind.

Would ask the court to tell me if, after buying a discounted return ticket and not show up at all, not even for the first leg; should I owe any money to the airline?

Do I have an obligation to fly after having bought a ticket and if I do not fly, do I owe compensation to the airline?

Presumably, the answer will be no.

Then, why would I owe the airline anything if I only flew the first leg and not the return? Or skip the last leg?

NickB

This is not comparable. If you buy a ticket from, say, KBP to JFK (albeit via CDG), and start in CDG, you are in effect substituting one product (CDG to JFK) to another (KBP to JFK).

It is similar to replacing you jar of pork liver pate with a jar of foie gras in your shopping basket. If you do not fly at all, then you are leaving the pork liver pate on the shelf. If you have paid the shop in advance, they do not care that you do not pick up the pork liver pate but they would certainly care if you substitute foie gras to pork liver pate and would, in all likelihood, ask you to pay for the difference.

carnarvon

You're making too complicated.

This thread is about skipping the last leg of a ticket, where the airlines argue that their are entitled to repricing.

However, if you want to keep the analogy with the foie gras, let's say that the shop sells 2 cans of foie gras for cheaper than one (promotion). You buy the 2 box promo, and only eat one. Discard the 2nd one.

Airlines argue that in this case, you should be charged extra and pay the difference between the cheaper 2 box promo and full fare one box.

My post was saying: what if I do not fly at all (or not eat not even one can)? Are they going to want to reprice me? If so, how much? And would the court agree?

NickB

You are committing exactly the same mistake, i.e. assuming that when AF is selling you a KGP-(CDG)-JFK product, it is selling you two different products bundled together: a KBP-CDG product and a CDG-JFK product. That is not the case. KBP-JFK via CDG is NOT the sum of KBP-CDG + CDG-JFK but a wholly different product.

If you want another analogy, a shop is selling you a ready meal that contains 150g of beef cheaper than it sells 150g of fresh beef at its meat counter and you are trying to argue that, because you paid for the ready meal, you are free to substitute fresh beef instead.

Again, you are free not to collect the ready meal that you paid for in advance (i.e. not fly) but you are not free to substitute another product (fresh meat; CDG-JFK) to another product (ready meal; KBP-JFK via CDG).

carnarvon

I give up.

orbitmic

I think you should because unfortunately NickB's interpretation is entirely correct in my humble view. If your AF ticket is for JFK-SVO made of two, three, or 40 segments, the trip you are buying is still JFK-SVO (as opposed to, say, "two trips" JFK-CDG and CDG-SVO which do not constitute individual products bundled together as NickB is pointing out). If you choose to fly JFK-CDG only, this is not "one of two segment" but instead "an entirely different itinerary with a different price" and there is nothing to suggest that price must be based on distance so that price could be much higher than what you originally paid. In fact, if AF cancelled one of their trips on that day and decided to reroute you on a direct JFK-SVO flight in such a way that you left JFK later than planned and arrived into SVO earlier than planned, then technically, I don't think that you would be legally entitled to forcing an alternative rerouting via CDG (although of course, commercially AF would probably accept some "I prefer AF metal so please reroute me via CDG" or something similar).

So while it may be hard for airlines to enforce any supplementary fare collection in the case of individually bought tickets, I don't think that saying that they would have no legal basis for claiming it would be correct. And whether people choose to ignore it or not, it seems to me that all the elements mentioned above, such as the example mentioned by irishguy28 point out to the fact that airlines are increasingly trying to make the life of 'segment skippers' harder by the day.

carnarvon

It does not answer my question about buying a return ticket and not use it at all.

NickB

It does: you are entirely free to buy a return ticket and not use it all. This is buying a product and deciding not to use it.

What you are not free to do is to buy a return ticket from A to B and use it to go from A to C or from C to B, even if C happens to be an intermediate routing point in your itinerary from A to B.
This would be buying a product and substituting another product, which is not at all the same thing as buying a product and deciding not to use it.

orbitmic

Sorry, I wrongly assumed it was a rhetorical question Buying any ticket and not using it at all would be no problem with any airline. You can always buy a product and choose not to use it. The issue is what you can derive from it:

(1) Can you derive from it that you could miss one segment without penalty and fly, say, JFK (CDG) KBP, KBP -CDG (miss the last CDG-KBP). No for the reasons outlined above (that legally there is simply no case of JFKKBP = JFKCDG + CDGKBP)

(2) Can you derive from it that you could miss one of the two directions of travel (e.g. fly outbound and skip return)? To me this is a more arguable case. The airline will argue that it violates your conditions of contract but in my view one would have a significantly stronger case in case of not talking the entire return trip than just skipping one segment.

PS: Apologies, just saw NickB has already answered but I was slow posting for multiple reasons!!!

erik123

I believe there have been some legal cases in the Netherlands and Germany on exactly this issue that were either settled or ruled in favor of the passenger. There have even been cases in both these countries where airlines could not force you to fly the first leg of an itinerary.

NickB

I do not know about the Netherlands. As far as Germany is concerned, it is indeed correct that the airline cannot force you to fly segments in coupon order. However, the airline is entitled to charge you the fare owed for the itinerary actually flown.

So you can decide to fly FRA-JFK with a KBP-FRA-JFK ticket. However, the airline can charge you the FRA-JFK fare if you decide to do so and the FRA-JFK fare is higher than the KBP-JFK fare.

Brobbel

I don't know about any legal case in the Netherlands either. Complaints thru consumers organizations yes, but no legal cases AFAIK.

erik123

Wasn't it a mixed bag - where some cases resulted in LH having to reimburse the passenger?