SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Lufthansa sues passenger who skipped his flight
A method commonly used by airline passengers to get cheaper fares is at the center of a court row between a German airline and one of its customers.
Lufthansa has taken a passenger, who didn't show up for the last leg of his ticketed journey, to court in an apparent bid to clamp down on "hidden city" ticketing. The practice involves passengers leaving their journey at a layover point, instead of making a final connection.
For instance, someone flying from New York to San Francisco could book a cheaper trip from New York to Lake Tahoe with a layover in San Francisco and get off there, without bothering to take the last leg of the flight.
The unnamed passenger skipped a flight from Frankfurt to Oslo and flew using a separate Lufthansa reservation from Frankfurt to Berlin instead. Lufthansa is calling this a violation of their terms and conditions and has sued the passenger for €2,112 ($2,386).
This method does not work if you have checked bags, and other people have reported retaliation from airlines for the practice.
Also at Fortune and Popular Mechanics.
See also: Airlines hate 'hidden city ticketing,' but it's still one of the best ways to save a ton on your flights — if you know how to do it
Travel Site CEO's Reddit AMA Backfires When Redditors Turn on Him
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday February 14 2019, @03:27AM (2 children)
I think this mostly ended up in court because of that final leg from Frankfurt-Berlin, proving pre-meditation and negating a simple "something came up and I had to miss my flight" defense.
Back in the 1990 time frame, I needed to buy a one-way fare from Europe back to the US, and, apparently, Belgium and the Netherlands had some kind of fare-structuring regulation at that time that required one-way fares to be priced approximately half of the round-trip fares. Flights from other countries were actually cheaper round-trip than they were one-way. There were many reasons, but I ended up driving and taking a train from Hamburg to Brussels, and spending a few nights on the way, to get my return flight - and it was net-cheaper to do it that way than to pay the one-way fare out of Hamburg.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday February 14 2019, @05:18PM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday February 14 2019, @09:06PM
Hell yeah, even if the fares were the same there were people to see in Brussels anyway...
🌻🌻 [google.com]