weero

Yes. Fare will slightly raise. But as most passengers cannot afford much more expensive tickets not all that much will happen.
Of course there is. They need to fill the planes. Or are you suggesting that they sell 'cheap' tickets as a form of charity these days? The vast majority of all tickets are cheap tickets. They are still the bulk of the business.

weero

Don't believe everything those voices tell you.

Intra Germany tickets are often affordable but the even the transborder market is already crazily priced. More competition of stricter pricing rules would help.

FD1971

Crazily priced? Really? I know it is not your strength, but could you entertain with a few examples, please? We are even able to reach tertiary markets around €250 all in., bigger markets are significantly cheaper.

As I said before, we should not really complain about fares in Germany and in Europe. Deregulation worked and with the help of certain people in the Middle East and Turkey, this will continue for some more years.

YuropFlyer

Have to agree with FD1971 here (but really just on this very issue, no worries )... European fares in general are NOT that expensive when comparing with other regions.

Here, my agreeing already stops Partly, this is due to strong alternatives (in some countries, good highways, in some countries, good train systems) - and not necessary only due to AB having a few flights on some routes..

LH couldn't price through the roof on the short/mid haul routes just because no one else would fly the route. They would increase the prices (just as any other airline would) but unless they went totally insane (to be discussed.. ) some pricing level has to be kept.

There are reasons why some routes got axed. And why some routes are still cash cows..

FD1971

The main reason is that the modus operandi changed. The days of the 30-50 seaters are gone and we have at least 100 seats on many aircraft.

Throughout the next 5 years many 80 seaters like the F70 and Dash8 will be replaced as well with a 100 seater.

So with the exception proving the rule, more seats result in lower costs per seat and those savings will be passed on to customers. The question is, to which extent and this extent is an important parameter for the profit of airlines.

Remember that the EU asked all airports bleeding milk, ääähh, cash to come up with a plan to be profitable (from ops. , without interest payments, IIRC) by 2024 and this might change the playing field again.

You can do the math, DTM lost € 20 million on roughly 2 million passengers, so the level of subsidies per pax or ticket is relatively easy to calculate and has to added to the cost of running operations somehow.

Let me ask you one question. Let's assume you run an airport or ATC or any other business related to aviation and you see one major parameter like oil becoming less expensive for the airlines, what would you do?

8420PR

A couple of key points:

(1) No new laws have been made. This is a judge interpreting existing contract law.

(2) As per the law, the consumer (passenger) may cancel the contracts, however the supplier (airline) is entitled to demand payment, less the costs of savings made by cancellation and the use of labour resources elsewhere (i.e. other customers).

(3) The airlines inability to show actual costs incurred meant the judge awarded 95% of ticket costs (plus interest) should be refunded. However I believe the case was against Alitalia?

(4) This is just one case - I don't know if there have been any previously that have been won or lost. It is a bit like EU261 - we only hear the cases where the passenger wins (normally published by the legal firm), the only chance of hearing the cases where the airline wins is if it is against ryanair (because they used to like doing a press release each time)!

(5) If you cancel a ticket today, you would have to go to court (plus appeal) to get your money back. No guarantee of winning, and also expensive. I don't see how this could become a mainstream automatic refund without a change in law? Additionally, the law says in cases of bad faith (i.e. the passenger didn't want to fly or maybe could have predicted they would need to cancel their flight) no refund is required (of the savings).

(6) Even assuming this becomes mainstream, I don't think revenue would be particularly impacted. Customers would still need to pay extra for changes, and pricing is higher the closer to departure or the more sold out the flight.

In Summary: I think this is all a big noise about nothing!

EDIT: This is my understanding - please correct me if I am factually incorrect.

N1003U

Entertaining thread. It will indeed be interesting to see how regulations shake out in this world of ever more creative ticket pricing and segmentation via alternative terms and conditions. This issue goes far beyond LH.

Somehow this nuanced discussion of German law on an English-language forum reminds me of an old passage from a Mark Twain essay:

...For instance, if one is casually referring to a house, Haus, or a horse, Pferd, or a dog, Hund, he spells these words as I have indicated; but if he is referring to them in the Dative case, he sticks on a foolish and unnecessary e and spells them Hause, Pferde, Hunde. So, as an added e often signifies the plural, as the s does with us, the new student is likely to go on for a month making twins out of a Dative dog before he discovers his mistake; and on the other hand, many a new student who could ill afford loss, has bought and paid for two dogs and only got one of them, because he ignorantly bought that dog in the Dative singular when he really supposed he was talking plural -- which left the law on the seller's side, of course, by the strict rules of grammar, and therefore a suit for recovery could not lie...

weero

Which markets would that be????

Canada may be he second craziest but what I have probed, SE Asia, China, USA, South America, OZ all come up with way less restrictions and much more humane pricing.
Not that you deserve it but say:
Early Sep, same day SYD-MEL return, QF prices around AUD 340 all in.
FRA-FCO (somewhat shorter distance n.b.), LH prices around EUR 540 all in
SEA-SFO (in between in length) on UA, prices 176 USD all in

With one-ways, the difference gets even more grotesque. Only with longer stays the situation converges somewhat.
You can say it a third and fourth time and it still won't approximate something that could be mistaken for the truth.

Germanfflyer

There have been many cases in the lower courts now - that agree on the finding of the Landgericht - mind you most of these cases will be in the Frankfurt courts because that is where most airlines reside in Germany

Here is the full text rulinghttp://www.teigelack.de/rs-24-LG-Fra...-S-152-13.html

weero

Even though that had no bearing in this case.

jarino

IMHO it just says that a certain Italian airline (we can guess which one) did not defend well in this case and a few other factors (OTA, new booking/re-booking, CC payment) complicated the case. If on one of the flights in question only one seat was empty (or filled with a stand-by non-revenue ID pax), and the airline can document this, it would be enough to win the case, because the court specifically asked the airline if the seat in question could be sold again or not - but the airline did not respond.

htb

The airline would not "win the case". German law stipulates that reservations are binding. However, if you cancel the reservation you can get back the amount of money that is "saved by the airline" because you are not flying, e.g. catering, airport charges etc. That is, unless you can show that all seats on your flight were sold after all -- then you can get even more, as was the case here because the airline refused to confirm or deny that all seats were sold.

HTB.

cfischer

this is totally insane. There are so many things that are wrong with that situation I don't know where to start. If this holds true then good night Lufthansa, Air Berlin and other carriers.

Germanfflyer

This will hold for true for the current situation for sure, as the travel agencies that used to charge a cancellation-fee as % of the travel-price have the same problem now as the highest court said - if the customer doubt the % is correct they have to prove their losses bit by bit.

The airlines ( ALL ) flying or selling tickets in Germany will have the same problem they just can not prove in court what the loss was in conjunction with the particular cancellation in question.
So if the plane is full anyway - no loss.
If they sold ANY seat after the cancellation they would need to prove the price they sold it at - if they took more cargo because a seat stayed empty - they made up some loss....
Bottom line they will never be able to calculate the loss - that is why they did not even tried to give an answer to the court...

htb

Yes. And good night to all the hotels in Germany as well. Doesn't seem to happen, though. Let me say it again: if you book a flight, you enter a binding contract. If you cancel, you have to pay anyway, minus the amount that the airline saves by you not traveling. As long as the airlines are unwilling to put a number on these savings, judges have no choice but to award the traveler a complete refund.

HTB.