Lufthansa sues customer for 'hidden city ticket'

This is a practice that people use to get a cheaper fare, but when you have hand luggage only.
I for one wouldn't bother with the hassle.

I guess the question before the court is whether or not a passenger is at liberty to buy a ticket and get off midway through the trip, regardless of what the airline t's and c's might say on the matter. It's interesting because I would imagine that this will vary widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. I wonder are they just looking for a scalp or two to try reduce the % rate of these trips happening.

Hidden city ticketing is not to be done when you need to be somewhere - You could easily be diverted around the network without much of a choice. Particularly in the US, where every airline have several hubs quite geographically spread. Purchase a ticket with United from Los Angeles to Dublin with the intention of getting to Chicago and you could find yourself in EWR or IAD quite easily instead. And goes without saying, no luggage in the hold.

What the airline could do would be to "fire" the customer. Maybe there's a legal reason why this is not possible, again depending on the jurisdiction, but the concept of firing customers is not unheard of. The German shoe e-tailer Zolando started firing customers when teenage girls kept ordering loads of shoes and having "Zolando parties" and then using the free returns to send them all back.

Credit Checker Moose wrote: »

What is interesting in this case is they are going after a German in a German court. Too much hassle to go after a foreigner.

How do LH know he flew to Berlin from Frankfurt? Was he stupid enough to book a LH flight from FRA-TXL?

I do partake in this activity from time to time. So long as you don't do it too often to the same airlines I doubt they would care too much. You can have legitimate reasons not to take the last leg. A sudden onset of illness for example.

I've heard of people having legitimate reasons for skipping the first leg of a multi-leg trip, eg plans change and they end up at the first stop by other means, and then discovering that the rest of their ticket has been cancelled. I never understood the reason why they would cancel until I read about this.

Why would they want to stop this. If they are happy to sell at that price then it shouldn't matter if the customer is there or not, they still get paid what the wanted.

Surely they are making more money this way due to less weight

It happens on trains too. Sometimes it can be cheaper to buy a ticket to a further destination and get off early.
The difference is you might not be able to get past the barrier as your ticket won't open it. And if it's a public-owned rail service there can be by-laws and on-the-spot fines.

Deleted User wrote: »

Why is it triple the price for a longer journey with extra flights and flight time in the first place?

It can sometimes be a fuel dump. There is a very large fuel surcharge for the entire trip, but a bug in the system can sometimes make the surcharge only active on the last leg, not the long flight. Much cheaper.


https://www.secretflying.com/posts/fuel-dumping-basics/

https://www.secretflying.com/posts/what-causes-an-error-fare/

I get the feeling Lufthansa told Ryanair to hold it's beer...

Gaoth Laidir wrote: »

Then £556 is some deal!

I checked a few random dates and it's almost exactly the same price as Norwegian's premium offering for the same route.

I did a similar thing last year.

Had flight booked from Dublin to Bilbao.

Ended up having to go to Malaysia with work

Return flights to Dublin via London was 2,000
The same flight to London and a different flight to Bilbao instead of Dublin was 2,500.
So they emwere charging the price of the Dublin flight + an additional 500 to go to Bilbao instead of Dublin

I was able to book a business class flight on the Bilbao flight from London for 30 euro and a few airmiles. I checked with BA and they were fine about it.

I then used the original booking to fly home from Bilbao

stephen.dunne wrote: »

Did this a few year ago when I flew to Vegas with my parents from DUB->LGW->LAS(I live in London)

I flew out to Dublin a few days earlier so I could give them a hand getting to the airport and getting us all through US immigration (I'd booked all three of us into the US Visa Waiver scheme), but on the way back I asked the ground staff at McCaren to only check my luggage through as far as Gatwick.

I was prepared for a bit of resistance, but nobody batted an eyelid; not at the airline or groundside at Gatwick.

Used to travel to Paris quite a bit with an old job.

Was going to Chicago pre-Xmas with the OH a few years ago, and was due in Paris the day after my return for meetings.

Did some looking online, and booking the flights as DUB-ORD-CDG with the DUB-ORD leg as Economy, and the ORD-CDG leg as Business, was working out cheaper than DUB-ORD-DUB all economy.

Booked the DUB-ORD-CDG as one trip, and used points to upgrade the outbound leg to Business also.

On the way back, I was due to land in DUB around 5.30, and had selected the 9.40 flight to CDG.

Check-in at ORD were quite happy to just check my luggage as far as DUB - I was able to collect baggage, leave the airport and nip home (was living within 20 min of airport at the time) to swap bags for my overnight case and take a 2hr nap.
Back to the airport for 9 and onto the CDG flight!


The best part was, my employer then re-imbursed me for the cost of the DUB-CDG leg, based on the online economy price around the time I was booking.

Worked out that a return business class trip to Chicago cost me approx. €400, plus whatever points GoldCircle we charging at the time

According to this (https://simpleflying.com/was-lufthansa-successful-in-suing-a-passenger-for-skiplagging/), Lufthansa lost their case but not because the passenger won but because the airline could not specify how much they had lost in calculating their claim.

And they lost the appeal also - https://liveandletsfly.boardingarea.com/2019/10/07/lufthansa-loses-lawsuit/.

dogmatix wrote: »

According to this (https://simpleflying.com/was-lufthansa-successful-in-suing-a-passenger-for-skiplagging/), Lufthansa lost their case but not because the passenger won but because the airline could not specify how much they had lost in calculating their claim.

And they lost the appeal also - https://liveandletsfly.boardingarea.com/2019/10/07/lufthansa-loses-lawsuit/.

Seems to imply that whilst the calculation was the reason for the case being lost, the court appeared likely to rule against them on the liability issue even if they had been able to prove the calculation

Lufthansa technically lost the first round in court because it failed to clearly clarify how it arrived at its final demand of €2,112, which it said included the difference in fare plus interest. But it likely did not matter, as the Berlin district court expressed skepticism that Lufthansa had any legal basis to charge a consumer for a service already paid for if not fully consumed.