Lufthansa tried to turn a loyal HON Circle member into an example. A flight attendant ratted him out for “throwaway ticketing” after he skipped his final segment to visit a sick relative, and the airline sent him a €414 bill for violating its fare rules. He hired a lawyer instead of paying — and a German court not only sided with him, it forced Lufthansa to rewrite its rules so passengers can now legally skip segments when plans change.
What Is Throwaway Ticketing, And Why Does It Save Money?
I wrote this week about throwaway ticketing, also known as ‘skiplagging’. Airlines hate it.
- They want to sell you flights from DC to Phoenix non-stop at a higher price than DC to Phoenix to Tucson. More airlines can connect you one-stop to Tucson and the price is going to be lower for that.
- But if you can buy a one-way ticket to Tucson, and just get off in Pheonix, their revenue strategies don’t work.
So they sell you DC to Phoenix to Tucson. You think you bought both flights, and can do with them as you wish. They’re your seats! But the airline says no – you bought travel to Tucson, not travel to Phoenix.
Airlines will potentially ban customers who do this too often. If a travel agency issues the ticket, they’ll bill the agency (and potentially ban the agency). But this is a contractual dispute, and not a moral one.
What Did The German Judge Say?
One Mile at a Time reports that a Lufthansa HON Circle member flew from Athens to Riyadh via Germany. While they were in Saudi Arabia, the customer says that a family member became ill in Germany – so he took his Lufthansa flight back from Riyadh to Frankfurt, and threw away his ticket back to Athens. He bought a separate ticket to Dusseldorf to see his sick family instead.
He apparently told a flight attendant what happened on his flight out of Riyadh, and she “expressed her shock that he was circumventing Lufthansa’s fare rules… and supposedly reported it” to the carrier.
A week later, he received a letter from ‘revenue integrity’ at Lufthansa demanding €414 – which was what changing his itinerary should have cost. Instead of paying, he engaged a lawyer and sought a declaratory judgment against Lufthansa. Lufthansa said he admitted to the flight attendant that he was using throwaway ticketing to save money.
The court essentially found that:
- An airline has a legitimate interest in charging fares based on market conditions, and getting the best price possible for a ticket.
- But once the ticket is purchased, the seat is no longer the carrier’s, and there’s no longer an interest in maximizing revenue.
- So a customer who intends to throw away a segment at time of purchase is breaking a legitimate rule.
- But a customer who buys a ticket intending to fly as-ticketed, but whose plans change, does “not pose a significant threat to the continued existence of the special pricing structure.”
The German court ruled that passengers can skip flight segments without being penalized if they did not intend to do so when they first made the booking. If circumstances change, they can use throwaway ticketing.
What Does Lufthansa Allow Now?
Lufthansa has updated its contract of carriage to comply with this ruling.
If you have chosen a fare that requires observance of a fixed ticket sequence, please note that if carriage is not used on all individual legs or not used in the sequence specified on the ticket, with otherwise unchanged travel data, we will recalculate the airfare in accordance with your amended routing. This does not apply if your travel plans simply change or if you are prevented, due to force majeure, illness or for another reason for which you are not responsible, from commencing carriage on all legs, or on individual legs in the order indicated on the flight ticket. Whenever possible, kindly notify us of the reasons for such changes as soon as you become aware of them.
(Emphasis mine.)
Is All Throwaway Ticketing Now Permissible On Germany?
Lufthansa says that you can engage in throwaway ticketing – in fact that you no longer have to fly all legs or each leg in the order on the original ticket – if your plans change for reasons outside of your control after ticketing.
Of course, you’re still not supposed to intentionally circumvent Lufthansa’s fares. So the operative condition here is, you can’t do throwaway ticketing if that’s your intent in buying the ticket, but if circumstances change after you’ve made the purchase then it’s fine.
Is there any possible way for the airline to know the difference? Let’s say I booked New York JFK – Frankfurt – Warsaw. That was cheaper than just New York JFK – Frankfurt. My plans changed through no fault of my own, and I even call Lufthansa in advance to tell them to drop the Frankfurt – Warsaw leg (I am checking bags and I want to collect the bags in Frankfurt, not Warsaw). How is Lufthansa supposed to vet this?
- “I’ve started having an affair in Frankfurt, but I told my spouse I was on business in Warsaw.” It’s not my fault that she seduced me after I’d purchased my tickets!
- “I lost my wallet in Frankfurt last week and need to check the airport lost and found to see if it’s there.”
- “I puchased a Lotto 6aus49, and haven’t been able to find out if I won.”
- “The LOT Polish lounge in Warsaw stopped serving my favorite beer, so I need to depart from Frankfurt instead.”
- “I need to end the trip in Frankfurt to stretch my legs and avoid deep vein thrombosis.”
For someone who booked in good faith and then had a family emergency, Lufthansa can’t claim “you damaged our pricing model” as a justification for a retroactive surcharge. And I suppose they’re banking primarily on Germans being rule-followers?
Ultimately I think the court is wrong about Lufthansa’s interest here. They clearly have a forward-looking economic interest in enforcing sequential coupon use even after sale, purely as deterrence: punish one guy to keep 10,000 others in line. However, German consumer law doctrine appears to care about concrete damage in this contract and proportionality, and not about Lufthansa’s broader interest.
Some Throwaway Ticketing Is Now Permissible On United And Air Canada
Lufthansa sells codeshare flights on United and Air Canada as part of those carriers’ joint business venture across the Atlantic.
- If the segment is ticketed as an LH flight number (e.g., LH####) and “operated by United” or “operated by Air Canada” then Lufthansa’s Conditions of Carriage say they apply to flights bearing “LH” on the ticket, and explicitly say they apply to codeshare services operated by other carriers.
- But that’s only when you have a Lufthansa flight number on those other airlines. If the segment is ticketed as a United or Air Canada flight number, even if you bought it from Lufthansa (it’s on a 220 ticket) then Lufthansa’s conditions do not apply.
- The operating carrier’s “special characteristics” still do apply (like check-in deadlines, boarding procedures, baggage acceptance, etc.).
As long as it’s a Lufthansa codeshare, throwaway ticketing on United is now permissible – provided that you decide you need the throwaway (for reasons that are no fault of your own) after purchasing the ticket.
“LuftKafka” — @All Due Respect
I will be flying from JFK to ORD to MKE in a few weeks.
But my grandma in Chicago will get sick during the flight, and I will walk off the plane in Chicago.
Try and stop me
@James — Good call. It’s the ORD-MKE flights that’ll getcha anyways. Even if you fully intended to proceed with the itinerary as booked, there’d be a thunderstorm, or a mechanical, etc. (Ask me how I know… oh, and the Four Points by MKE is… something.)
An interesting thought about not completing a ticket and staying in a connecting city. If the airline does not fly on the date and time shown on the ticket, could that be used as an excuse for terminating the final leg? Say you had a time critical flight from Chicago to podunk for a meeting and the airline blew the connection or maybe podunk was snowed in. At that point, getting to podunk is a bad call. Maybe it is better to just get a flight back to your originating city on another ticket or even a ticket already booked if you were booked on two one-way tickets. Airlines typically try to screw some customers by taking money and not flying them. They should have to fly the person for the segments the person can take at the date and time on the ticket.
Waiting to hear a skip lag story concerning how “My emotional support dog ate my connecting flight ticket”
Outside of this specific case for an unexpected illness, the great majority of skiplagging schemes are such a hassle. Play by the chosen airlines rules or don’t fly them at all.
Sloppy wording in the addition to the contract of carriage. What does “This” refer to? It would seem to permit (for circumstances outside the passenger’s control) using ticket coupons out of sequence, or skipping a segment other than the last, not just skiplagging as we know it. Of course, you’d have a hard time convincing an agent at FRA that your FRA-JFK itinerary shouldn’t have been canceled because you had to leave Munich earlier than planned (because they ran out of your favorite beer at Oktoberfest) and you skipped your initial MUC-FRA flight.
Seth
@alohadavekennedy — “Good boi.”
I’m not sure why the term “skiplagging” has come to be favored in recent years; it is the least descriptive and most cryptic term for the practice of “hidden city ticketing” or “throwaway ticketing.” The latter two terms are more intuitive and (IMHO) far easier to understand. I’m not sure who’s responsible for the term “skiplagging,” but I wish it had never come into existence.
@1990 – Do tell about the Four Points in Milwaukee. I really like the city even though I only discovered it early last year and have returned twice. I’ve stayed at the Hyatt Regency because Globalist but my lifetime platinum with Bonvoyed allows me some flexibility. What’s the Four Points like?
You are all missing a very key condition in Lufthansa’s revised rule:
Whenever possible, kindly notify us of the reasons for such changes as soon as you become aware of them.
Note the obligation to advise them.
You can do this a few times, but not every time.
A few years ago I needed to fly one way from genoa to madrid, via FRA
One way was 900 euros and roundtrip 200 euros…
Fast forward a few months later I get an email from LH that my flight from Madrid to Frankfurt and back to Genoa is “ready to board”…took me a few minutes to even remember that I did this ….
I also needed to fly EZE to MIami and the AA non stop was 1000 usd while EZE to LAX via miami was 500….so I just developed future dhiarrea syndrome and bought the ticket to LAX…but had a week long bathroom stop in Miami….
Unless you do this often and on same route airlines will not cares
“Rats him out”??
It’s all employees’ job to look after the interests of their employer, the employer who pays them.
Do flight attendants have an incentive to report passengers discarding a ticket, aside from a warm feeling of knowing that they are supporting company policy for maximizing revenue?
My assumption has been that enforcement of such terms was through analysis of sales and usage. Perhaps leaving such “police work” to the bean-counters would be less likely to encourage adversarial interactions on-board.
I expect that relying solely on data analytics, would reveal all such occurrences and facilitate focusing on frequent offenders.
Airline marketing is not a valid business model in any business school. That’s a fact. Seats can be sold and assigned and there can be no refunds. That’s a valid model. The current airline marketing is based on government subsidies ONLY. Burn the smoke detectors.
“Rats him out”??
This is what is called being too clever by half.
I am now curious about the beer changes that you allude to at the LOT lounge.
Bless up 1990
@Christian — The Four Points at MKE is where you end up when United has a mechanical and all the other hotels are booked; at least it’s one of the closest to the airport.
I like Milwaukee, generally. Have used points/free nights with IHG at the Kimpton Journeyman; excellent location (Third Ward), rooftop bar and restaurant. If you haven’t been to the Milwaukee Art Museum, I’d highly recommend it on a future visit (it’s the building by the lake that looks like a spaceship.)