Interesting Court Decision In Germany - Passenger does not need to fly last leg
#256
Join Date: May 2013
Posts: 6,349
Interesting debate. I'm not sure I see a clear argument either way so prefer to await the outcome of a BA test case if we ever see one.
I imagine the reason a test case has never happened is either i) the amount of revenue at stake is small and/or ii) BA's legal opinion says the chances of winning such a case are uncertain.
Either way I don't see the likelihood of air travel getting cheaper, so for me it still boils down to a personal decision on whether the saving of an ex EU start and a dropped final leg outweighs the hassle of pointless positioning flights. Or whether it is easier just to go on another airline. The legal considerations don't really come into it.
I imagine the reason a test case has never happened is either i) the amount of revenue at stake is small and/or ii) BA's legal opinion says the chances of winning such a case are uncertain.
Either way I don't see the likelihood of air travel getting cheaper, so for me it still boils down to a personal decision on whether the saving of an ex EU start and a dropped final leg outweighs the hassle of pointless positioning flights. Or whether it is easier just to go on another airline. The legal considerations don't really come into it.
#257
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If you find that the last sector of your ex-EU has been cancelled, you can accept the cancellation and you will get a refund from BA which may be for a pleasantly surprising amount. So that's not an issue.
But that's not the situation you mentioned before: the passenger has bought a non-refundable fare and the airline is ready and wiling to carry the passenger to their ticketed destination, but the passenger wants to change something. The non-refundability of the ticket does not bar the airline from charging for the change. It happens all the time.
But that's not the situation you mentioned before: the passenger has bought a non-refundable fare and the airline is ready and wiling to carry the passenger to their ticketed destination, but the passenger wants to change something. The non-refundability of the ticket does not bar the airline from charging for the change. It happens all the time.
Two parties have entered contract for a service. The purchaser had the option of two services, one of which was higher priced - the purchaser opted for the lower priced service.
The vendor stands ready to render the service to the purchaser, but the purchaser is choosing to avail themselves of the higher priced service without recourse. The vendor is claiming the right to charge the higher price for the service actually provided.
The fact that the lower priced service entirely contains the higher priced service - and is thus something that the purchaser can unilaterally avail themselves of - is somewhat peculiar to the airline business [hence the plethora of analogies], but is not relevant.
#258
Join Date: Feb 2009
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The airline's loss is very easy to work out. To take simplified round numbers: Suppose that a LHR-JFK-LHR ticket costs Ł4,000. Suppose that you can instead buy a FRA-JFK-FRA ticket for the equivalent of Ł2,000, with a routing that connects through LHR in both directions. In those circumstances it is likely that a FRA-JFK-LHR ticket (with an outbound connection at LHR) would cost Ł3,000.
However, the airlines own pricing structure defeats that argument, since if there was an excess of customers willing to pay Ł4,000 for A-B, then they would never offer A-B-C for Ł2,000, they would offer it for the price of Ł4,000 for A-B, plus the segment cost of B-C, since they can sell all the A-B seats they can. Clearly they can't though, or there would be no reason for the multi segement flights to be cheaper
Inflexible tickets that have no value if a customer misses a flight/ connection also work against they argument of the airline suffering a loss, as if the customer misses a flight on a non changeable ticket the airline has been paid for a service it is not required to perform. That allows the practice of overbooking to further maximise revenue, which would otherwise be impossible.
Pretty much any way you looks at it, legacy airline pricing is stacked against the consumer, I'm actually surprised that LH would want some of these things tested in court, they might get a result they are quite unhappy with.
#259
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However I hope governments consider the broader competition law aspects to allow this to stand.
#260
Join Date: Nov 2014
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If the price you should have paid for the product is Ł3,000, and you have only paid Ł2,000 because you have paid for a different product, then I can't see how you couldn't measure the loss at Ł1,000.
In any event, without getting to deeply into the technicalities, if the contract specifies that in these circumstances you must pay that difference, then that is what the contract obliges you to pay. It could be that the measure of loss that might be applied in a tort claim is completely irrelevant.
It's dead easy to get a price for FRA-JFK-LHR online. Even ba.com can handle it without difficulty. However, if we get away from hypothetical numbers and start looking at what is the actual cost of a FRA-JFK-LHR ticket, you may not like the answer.
In any event, without getting to deeply into the technicalities, if the contract specifies that in these circumstances you must pay that difference, then that is what the contract obliges you to pay. It could be that the measure of loss that might be applied in a tort claim is completely irrelevant.
It's dead easy to get a price for FRA-JFK-LHR online. Even ba.com can handle it without difficulty. However, if we get away from hypothetical numbers and start looking at what is the actual cost of a FRA-JFK-LHR ticket, you may not like the answer.
#262
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I think it is relevant, as I can't think of anything else outside of air transport ( and I think the UK trains are also an anomaly in worldwide rail travel pricing) that getting a greater amount of service costs less than a lesser amount of service. If I hire a yard service to mow my grass, it costs more if I have a bigger yard over a small yard. If the crew shows up and mows my front grass and I tell them not to bother with the back (even though I have paid for the back to be mowed), they are not going to send me a bill for not mowing the back yard. The very idea is laughable.
#263
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What legal system is this?
If I am a grocer and someone pays me only for an apple but walks out of my store with a cut of beef instead, I have no recourse unless I can prove a future customer who wanted an apple was turned away because I was all out of apples?
#264
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Granted, it is an industry with a phenomenally high barrier to entry - and I would not argue that it needs to be less regulated - but I don't see the issue here.
#265
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I think it is relevant, as I can't think of anything else outside of air transport ( and I think the UK trains are also an anomaly in worldwide rail travel pricing) that getting a greater amount of service costs less than a lesser amount of service. If I hire a yard service to mow my grass, it costs more if I have a bigger yard over a small yard. If the crew shows up and mows my front grass and I tell them not to bother with the back (even though I have paid for the back to be mowed), they are not going to send me a bill for not mowing the back yard. The very idea is laughable.
You are consuming the convenient service while paying for the inconvenient one - then arguing entirely without taking convenience into account. It is up to you how you value that convenience - but you cannot argue that it has zero value or you would be taking the last leg!
#266
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Perhaps we can express the issue in an airline agnostic way:
Two parties have entered contract for a service. The purchaser had the option of two services, one of which was higher priced - the purchaser opted for the lower priced service.
The vendor stands ready to render the service to the purchaser, but the purchaser is choosing to avail themselves of the higher priced service without recourse. The vendor is claiming the right to charge the higher price for the service actually provided.
Two parties have entered contract for a service. The purchaser had the option of two services, one of which was higher priced - the purchaser opted for the lower priced service.
The vendor stands ready to render the service to the purchaser, but the purchaser is choosing to avail themselves of the higher priced service without recourse. The vendor is claiming the right to charge the higher price for the service actually provided.
to be carrier specific: BA's contract conditions (the CoC) do not impose a contractual requirement to fly all the flights on the ticket and do not impose a right of claim for BA on the passenger should all the flights not be flown. BA merely require being told that you're not going to fly the remaining segments, at which point BA can request you pay them the fare difference; should you decline that fare difference request, then BA reserve the right to deny boarding of the remaining flights on the ticket.
Now, there's the question many here are asking which is: if a hypothetical CoC did impose such a contractual requirement to fly every leg (again, BA's does not): what is the calculation of loss to the airline for a breach of this contractual requirement?
Given airlines operate a Monopolistic pricing model which can be summarised as:
$2 for a bag of two apples
*or*
$1 for a bag of four apples - as long as you agree to eat all four
I doubt there are many examples of case law for what the vendor's loss is for a failure to eat all four apples?
The problem for the vendor is: it is easy for the buyer to demonstrate that it's cheaper for the vendor to provide two (or three) apples rather than four apples, and as such if you only consume three apples, the vendor's actual, realized costs are lower, not higher. The vendor's loss argument would have be a tort claim from consequential loss/opportunity foregone, but frankly I'd fancy my chances much more as consumer than vendor in front a UK judge on this one.
Last edited by alexwuk; Feb 15, 2019 at 10:51 am
#269
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