Tafflyer

I do not agree. If Lufthansa loses, nothing changes compared to how it is today. If Lufthansa wins, then the ex-EU traveller who drops the final leg is in trouble. Actually, I think it's far more about market protection than anything else. Airlines want to make it more difficult for consumers to justify going out of their way for an ex-EU, ex-UK, or ex-Anything in favour of paying monopolised prices for direct flights. It's all only about money. On FT we want to game it in our favour. The airlines want to game it in their favour. All fair, and as it is right now, still fun.

Globaliser

I would not be so sanguine. One of the effects of the Internet is that more and more people are finding out about this strategy. You can see that in the increasing number of enquiries here from people who have never done an ex-EU before, and who are interested in doing one even though their personal circumstances make it a dubious proposition. But you can also see that in the various reports from around the world (not just Europe) of the increasing aggression with which the industry is currently trying to deal with the problem. Even within Europe, many here will remember the reports that BA was changing its view about dropped last sectors. Hidden city ticketing is not a new problem, but the current interest in enforcement is a change. And as has frequently been said, so long as airlines aren't losing much money from a few people pulling tricks at the margins, they'll be frying their bigger fish - but if they start losing bigger money ...

Jagboi

I don't think the prices will change, as the market all of a sudden will not be willing to pay non stop prices for indirect itineraries with stopovers. What will change is those who do ex EU's will be able to drop the last segment without fear.

Or perhaps the pricing will change, much like the domestic market changed in Canada when LCC's came in. It used to be that there was restrictions that all journeys were returns and had Saturday night stay requirements, or one ways were much more expensive, much like trans atlantic one way flights are now. Then the LCC's introduced segment pricing, and now all domestics are segment prices - a return is 2 one ways put together. Makes open jaws much easier too. I could see the legacies doing long haul flights that way too eventually.

Often1

The prices won't really change if this happens. Just as very few Germans purchase tickets which may be flown out of order because the prices are so high, the number of people who will engage in hidden city ticketing fraud to take advantage of xEU pricing will drop if the practice is mandated but is expensive.

Don't forget that there is nothing wrong with so-called xEU ticketing. It is dropping the last segment of the positioning flight which is causing the angst. The only reason someone based in London would fly to DUB to board a flight back to DUB so that he could get to JFK is to save money. If dropping the last segment is prohibitively expensive, either people who want xEU tickets will be flying a lot of extra segments out to DUB and then back o n a positioning ticket or they won't be saving anything.

tigertanaka

Whilst we can agree or disagree on the various analogies put forward on the thread, surely the big issue is the pricing differentials that are sometimes involved.

I totally understand why AMS-BKK on BA is cheaper than LHR-BKK due to the reduced demand from AMS, the competitive pressure versus KL and the inconvenience of having to change at LHR. However, to charge over 100% more for direct versus indirect when you are sitting on the same seats for 90% of the journey seems far too disproportionate.

In the summer we are going to Florida, the flight in J from LGW-TPA/MCO-LGW was about Ł2,550 each (cheapest option on BA, either TPA or MCO were fine for me). Booking it ex-DUB was under Ł1,200 each - even after deducting the APD, the ex-LON cost is still more than double the ex-DUB price.

For 3 of us the saving on tickets is Ł3,900, offset by Ł109 for 3 tickets & 2 bags to position to DUB (on FR - shhhhh), Ł63 for a night in the Premier Inn and an extra night on the holiday. Great for me but these sort of savings surely make some airline pricing policies extremely difficult to defend.

alex67500

True, there's been a lot of bad faith in there. And even though I have an opinion, I've never actually dropped a leg. The Internet in 2019 I guess :-(

We'll have to wait and see what the German judges decide.

snaxmuppet

It isn't really the same as that at all. Firstly, there is no disadvantage to taking the Fri/Sat/Sun over the cheaper Fri/Sat ticket. In that situation no one would buy a 2 day ticket as there is no reason not to buy a 3 day one. This is a totally unreasonable analogy. Sorry.

With an airline there is a clear disadvantage to buying a ticket with more sectors to get to your destination and so the direct route has a premium value to those that want to pay for it.

Imagine two routes... A-B and A-C. They are priced the same. There are the direct, and more convenient, more popular and so more expensive, routings A-B and A-C. They can command a premium price as it is the most convenient and quickest routings. However, lets assume that the route A-C is always booked out but there is spare capacity on A-B and also B-C. The airline would like to utilise that spare capacity on A-B and B-c so they offer those travelling A-C to route via B so A-B-C. Now we have the situation where it is cheaper to fly A-B-C then the direct route A-C. Also, as A-B and A-C are the same price it is also cheaper than the direct route A-B. The only purpose behind the A-B-C routing is to use spare capacity on B-C. If I take that A-B-C routing and drop the B-C then I have actually flown the direct, and so more expensive route A-B when I paid for a cheaper A-B-C totally negating the purpose, from the airline's perspective of the A-B-C routing in the first place.

Dropping the last sector then means you have flown a direct route A-B and so you should have paid for the direct, convenient, more expensive A-B route instead of the cheaper, multi-sector, A-B-C.

This then is the crux of the matter for me. There is an assumption made when an airline sells us a ticket... that is that we want to go to where we have bought the ticket to. The pricing of all tickets makes that assumption it seems to me and so the rules of supply and demand can then be used to price accordingly. If we try to deceive the airline as to where we want to end up then they lose the opportunity to sell the more direct routes at a premium price. I think we all agree that the direct routes should command a premium price but it all crumbles into a bag of chalk if we tell the airline we want to go somewhere but actually travel to somewhere else.


I agree if it were a genuine illness but unless you had a good and provable reason why you want to make that final leg in the first place it would be pretty obvious that you had no intention to fly it at all and that it was a deception. This would be easy to determine.

Those analogies are not comparable.
With the DVD example, there has been a material loss... it is the money they would have got had you actually paid for the download you wanted. It is still theft. This whole idea that illegal downloads are victimless is a total fallacy.

With the hot dog one there is no material loss to the hot dog seller if you scrape off the mustard. Using my example above, the airline has been tricked into selling you a cheaper ticket A-B-C instead of the direct premium ticket A-B and so has lost the opportunity to sell the A-B direct ticket at a premium price. Instead they have sold it as part of a A-B-C route thereby releasing a direct A-C ticket to be sold at a premium price. It isn't theft but it comes pretty close to deception in my book and is certainly an unfair manipulation of the pricing IMO.

The assumption here is that a multi-sector route is a sum of individual parts. It isn't. It is a single route from the point of departure to the point of destination and it was priced accordingly. To go to a different destination would not be the same and would require a different pricing as different commercial pressures apply.

memesweeper

brentford77

I have done any number of Ex EUs. I always (at least in recent years) try to book a last leg that I can use. e.g. on to Stockholm a day or two after the long haul leg back to London with the intention of using it. However, I generally book 2-4 weeks ahead, and things change. Meetings get rescheduled, others elsewhere take precedence. Net effect? I have dropped half a dozen last legs over the last 5 or 6 years. Generally it isn't my intention. Lordie if they are going to rule that effectively, if my plans change and a drop a leg, I should pay an undefined (until after the event) penalty to an airline because I have scurrilously defrauded them...what a can of worms!

snaxmuppet

It is a can of worms as it stands I agree but it needn't be if they priced all intermediate stops as if they were destinations... then you could decide if it was financially acceptable to buy the ticket on that basis. I really don't know why this isn't just done then no one coupd complain as we would have all the facts prior to booking.

etiene

To those arguing that the prices will not change, what conceptual line do you draw between dropping the last leg and "dropping" the first...?

simpletastes

Yes, this is what the airlines want, but why should we care? We are not here to help the airlines price fares correctly or to balance their supply and demand. If they can play the game, so should we. When we buy a ticket, we do not owe "honesty" of our travel intentions to anyone.

Make no mistake - airlines are profit maximizing entities and they are big enough to worry about themselves. It completely riles me up that they are suing customers who have found a smart and legitimate way -- completely fair game in a liberal market-based economy -- around their pricing strategy. Every pricing strategy has its weakness. They should accept this, or change their pricing strategy instead of suing their customers. I'm someone who has not dropped the last segment of my itineraries before and do not plan to do so, but I am just mad at the behaviour of the airlines in this respect.

snaxmuppet

Well IMO we should. When you buy a ticket from A-C your price is determined on that basis. To then go to B just because your route takes you through B means you bought an A-B ticket by deception. I know there are a lot of people who don't give a rat's rear-end about whether they are being honest or not and that is your choice, but if you buy tickets by deception then I believe that the airline should have every right to recover their losses and possibly ban the perpetrators for repeated abuse with consequential loss of club status and benefits etc

Just saying...

simpletastes

I respect your point of view, but you are holding consumers to a standard which the airlines themselves are very unlikely to reciprocate.

snaxmuppet

But it is not legitimate or fair. If you buy a ticket to C and then travel to B then you have bought a ticket to B at a C price by deceptively saying you are going to C. That in any book of mine is deception and not legitimate at all IMO.

Yes, it is smart of us to find these kinds of things if the airlines allow it I suppose and yes, it is down to them to close any loopholes. However, it doesn't make it right.

I have an OTP-LHR-JFK-LAX-PHX return booked. I am flying my last LHR-OTP because I said I would and the pricing reflected that. I did consider dropping the last leg but I now believe this to be wrong after reading this thread and considering it in more detail. I wouldn't get worked up if others wanted to do it... that is your choice... but for me it isn't right