Lufthansa sues passenger for not taking last leg of flight booking

Passengers paying a premium for non stop flights provides a commercial rationale for the price discrepancy. But legally it falls apart as the airline haven’t lost out as a result of the final leg not being used. The court sided with the passenger the first time, will be interesting to see the result of the appeal, and if successful what the legal basis was.

Depends upon whether you believe the T&C's of a ticket you purchase should be enforceable. This is a well known technique for significantly reducing flight costs, and for long haul flights many people will, for example, take an economy short haul as a "positioning flight", to then take a long-haul in business class - e.g. position to CDG, and then fly CDG-LHR-SYD. Even with the positioning flight taken in to account, the total cost can be drastically lower than just taking LHR-SYD. Absolutely no issue in the eyes of the airline, but the expectation is that you then, on your return, go SYD-LHR-CDG, and have to use a return positioning flight to get back to LHR. If you drop that final CDG leg, you are in breach of your ticket conditions. As a one-off, not likely to be enforced; but there are many people that regularly do this and that's getting the airlines' backs up.

Reminds me (in a small way) of the person that got taken to court because they bought one business class fully-changeable ticket, and simply used the lounge each day (and then changed the ticket) without ever flying.

The flight delay scenario did not immediately cross my mind, thanks for the heads up - and the HCT.

If you book through an agent, the risk is the agent receives a demand from the airline for the loss, however, they have to show the agent knew or indeed was selling the ticket knowing the customer did not intend to travel on the last sector. It is not just airlines where this applies, from my local station to St Pancras the day return fare at peak time is now £76, but if I buy a ticket to Luton or Hatfield which requires me to go through the exit barrier at the station to get to the next train, I save nearly £25. With no disrespect to Luton, I have no desire to go there at all but my pocket is full of tickets to somewhere I never go but also full of the money I have saved. I think few judges could find a reason to charge me more to travel a shorter distance but if Lufthansa succeeds, there are going to thousands of very unhappy travellers worldwide.