Lufthansa sues passenger for not taking booked flight

One of the world’s biggest airlines is seeking to sue a passenger who did not take the last leg of their ticketed journey, threatening a widely used hack for cheaper flights. Lufthansa is pursuing payment from an unnamed traveller who, it believes, deliberately bought a ticket with no intention of flying the last leg. While an initial court case found in the passenger’s favour, Lufthansa has been given permission to appeal. At the centre of the issue is that passengers will pay a premium for non-stop flights. The principle that airlines charge less for more flights underpins pricing strategies by “network carriers” such as Lufthansa, Air France and British Airways. <br/>An increasing number of travellers seek to take advantage of such pricing policies, with online sites such as Skiplagged delving into databases to suggest how to cut costs on journeys by throwing away unwanted segments. There are numerous pitfalls, starting with the mistake that many people make of missing out the first flight. Typically they might find a Dublin-London-New York ticket more cheaply than London-New York alone and plan to use only the UK-US segment. But when they turn up at Heathrow they discover their whole itinerary has been cancelled because they were a “no-show” for the first flight. Story explains more.<br/>