This story is absolutely wild, and it shows an unbelievable level of pettiness on the part of Lufthansa. At the same time, the airline kind of shot itself in the foot, as a judge ruled in favor of the passenger, forcing the airline to change its policy (thanks to Oskiboski for flagging this).
Lufthansa demanded €414 from passenger for skipping segment
A German lawyer recently shared an experience that he had defending a client who has Lufthansa’s top tier HON Circle status, which requires a massive amount of flying on the airline.
In April 2025, he had booked a ticket from Greece to Saudi Arabia via Germany. According to his version of events, in the middle of the trip, while in Saudi Arabia, a family member became sick in Germany. So he flew from Riyadh (RUH) to Frankfurt (FRA), and the instead of continuing on the ticket to Athens (ATH), he instead booked a separate ticket to get to Dusseldorf (DUS), where his sick family member was located.
On the flight from Saudi Arabia to Frankfurt, a flight attendant supposedly engaged him in small talk (Lufthansa flight attendants will often try to show extra care to HON Circle members), and he mentioned his changed travel plans. She then expressed her shock that he was circumventing Lufthansa’s fare rules… and supposedly reported it to the airline!!
A little over a week after the flight, the passenger received a letter from Lufthansa’s “revenue integrity” department, demanding that he pay €414. The claim was that he paid €551 for the ticket, while the itinerary he actually flew would’ve cost €965. He was given just two weeks to make the payment.
The passenger then engaged a lawyer and asked him to file a declaratory judgment action. In Lufthansa’s response, the company named the flight attendant as the witness, claiming that the passenger told the flight attendant that he wasn’t planning on connecting to Athens because he paid so little for the ticket by booking it this way. In response, Lufthansa claimed that the passenger was violating the carrier’s contract of carriage, and quoted old case law.
Lufthansa lost this case big time, shot itself in foot
The hearing for this case was supposed to happen on November 24, 2025, though four days before that date, Lufthansa chose to withdraw its case. Despite that, the Bundesgerichtshof (Germany’s federal court of justice) still ruled on this subject, and specifically, came to two primary conclusions:
“The imposition of a payment obligation for passengers who, at the time of concluding the contract, intended to use the full service and have changed their plans due to subsequently discovered circumstances, is not justified by the legitimate interests of the defendant.”
“The legitimate interest in adapting to the respective market requirements and being able to demand the best price achievable on the market is sufficiently taken into account if a passenger who wishes to use a specific service concludes a contract at the price stipulated for that service. Circumstances that only come to light after the conclusion of the contract and lead to the passenger changing their plans have no influence on the decision to conclude the contract and therefore do not pose a significant threat to the continued existence of the special pricing structure.”
So essentially the court ruled that passengers can skip segments on an itinerary without being penalized, as long as they don’t intend to do so at the time of booking (in other words, due to circumstances that arise after the ticket is purchased).
You’ll see that Lufthansa has even updated its contract of carriage to reflect this. If you go to Section 3.3.4., you’ll now see the following, specifically for residents of Germany and Austria (it doesn’t apply to residents of other countries):
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.
Of course all of this raises the question as to how Lufthansa can prove intent with throwaway ticketing. A German court ruled that throwaway ticketing is allowed as long as it’s not intended when you book a ticket, but of course there are all kinds of life circumstances that can come up after the time of booking, so…
Bottom line
I don’t think there’s an airline better at self-owning than Lufthansa. In the latest example, a top tier HON Circle passenger skipped a flight segment on an itinerary, and somehow the flight attendant reported that to corporate. Days later, the airline demanded €414, so the guy enlisted the help of a lawyer.
The lawyer was delighted to take on the case to set a precedent, and ultimately Lufthansa tried to withdraw its objection. Nonetheless, a court still ruled on this, and decided that the airline can’t penalize passengers for flights they skip, as long as they don’t intend to so prior to booking. Now Lufthansa has even had to update its contract of carriage.
I know we’ve been using the term “getting Bonvoyed” for a long time, though maybe we should make an airline equivalent, and call it “getting Allegrised?”
What do you make of this Lufthansa story?
The actual term is Spohr-nicated.
lol fair enough
Never tell an airline employee specifics like what you paid for a ticket, how you got in a premium cabin, whether you are going to avoid airline rules. Why do people need to brag to a flight attendant of how cheap their fare was, how they're going to get one up on the airline, or that the gate agent upgraded them maybe over someone else. Most flight crew could care less, many have no clue...
Never tell an airline employee specifics like what you paid for a ticket, how you got in a premium cabin, whether you are going to avoid airline rules. Why do people need to brag to a flight attendant of how cheap their fare was, how they're going to get one up on the airline, or that the gate agent upgraded them maybe over someone else. Most flight crew could care less, many have no clue as to what the status levels include. But then you get the crew member like this.
Frankly, I concur. As a general practice. I'd never engage in the kind of disclosure that this person engaged in.
Also, LuftKafka shouldn't be creating a culture of FAs hell bent on snitching on perceived minor transgressions of passengers that have nothing to do with their jobs (passenger safety).
*chef's kiss* on 'LuftKafka'
Vielen dank 1990. Gotta turn your feels into creativity, amirite?
The flight attendant, let's call her Frau Kravitz, if ever identified, will be subject now to reporting of violations she makes during a flight. I hope he/she gets what's coming. What a complete d-bag.
I recall commenter Oskiboski bringing this Dr. Böse story up in the recent TAP post.
Perhaps you should call it "Getting Spohr'd" Ben. A Lufthansa flight attendant informing on a HON Circle passenger to revenue enforcement. Over €414. During a family medical emergency.
One might call it Stasi-lite, but that would be unfair to the Stasi, who at least had the excuse of serving a totalitarian regime rather than Carsten Spohr's bottom line.
The delicious irony: in their pursuit of pocket change from a top-tier customer, Lufthansa managed to lose...
Perhaps you should call it "Getting Spohr'd" Ben. A Lufthansa flight attendant informing on a HON Circle passenger to revenue enforcement. Over €414. During a family medical emergency.
One might call it Stasi-lite, but that would be unfair to the Stasi, who at least had the excuse of serving a totalitarian regime rather than Carsten Spohr's bottom line.
The delicious irony: in their pursuit of pocket change from a top-tier customer, Lufthansa managed to lose in court and establish legal precedent preventing them from penalizing any German or Austrian resident for skipping segments due to changed circumstances. Millions in potential future revenue sacrificed to extract €414 from a loyal passenger in crisis. Brilliant.
This comes as Miles & More announces "exciting changes" featuring dynamic award pricing tied to cash fares while maintaining saver-level availability restrictions. Translation: awards cost more, remain equally impossible to find, and Lufthansa expects applause. Meanwhile, they're installing two different business class products on the same 747s because apparently over-engineering Allegris wasn't complicated enough.
The pattern is unmistakable. Collective punishment of Jewish passengers. Attempted AirTag bans when customers documented lost luggage. Spohr's security team investigating a 21-year-old aviation fan for "spying" after the kid asked for a selfie and made a cardboard cutout. And now crew members trained to rat on even their best passengers.
Spohr has successfully transformed a premium carrier into a surveillance operation car crash with wings. How long before passengers simply choose airlines that treat them as customers rather than suspects?
Excellent Stasi analogies, my liege.
Bless up brudi
Airline check in systems generally verify this provided you are on the same carrier.
So if for example London- Frankfurt - Athens and you no showed London Frankfurt then apart from the fact the system will cancel the onward flight the staff at FRA would penalise you. However if you can provide evidence after the fact, you could ask them to reimburse you once you’ve travelled. I wouldn’t argue with the staff at the...
Airline check in systems generally verify this provided you are on the same carrier.
So if for example London- Frankfurt - Athens and you no showed London Frankfurt then apart from the fact the system will cancel the onward flight the staff at FRA would penalise you. However if you can provide evidence after the fact, you could ask them to reimburse you once you’ve travelled. I wouldn’t argue with the staff at the airport.
If you bought a new ticket say Rome Frankfurt on LH to connect FRA ATH it’s in
their interest commercially.
If you buy your ticket in Italy / on an Italian portal commencing in Italy you can use tickets in non sequential order. However the vast majority of people don’t do that.
Moreover if frequent fliers do this all
the time then it’s not an exception so the airline could penalise them. It’s recorded. If someone buys dozens of tickets a year and did it once, give them the benefit of the doubt. Germans are also notoriously litigious and far now so than Americans as they have access to legal representation via insurance.
I flew LH without issue, transatlantic a couple of times a year, for a decade or so pre-Covid. I'm not German, but I must look sufficiently so because staff always warmly greated me as such and were generally helpful and pleasant to my family and I.
One bad experience in 2022 started to sour that positive option. Flying through Frankfunt in first, I was refused entry to any of the lounges due to the Paul...
I flew LH without issue, transatlantic a couple of times a year, for a decade or so pre-Covid. I'm not German, but I must look sufficiently so because staff always warmly greated me as such and were generally helpful and pleasant to my family and I.
One bad experience in 2022 started to sour that positive option. Flying through Frankfunt in first, I was refused entry to any of the lounges due to the Paul Ehrlich Institute guidance on vaccines (mine didn't count to them apparently). So despite having all approved paperwork checked with the airline in advance they gave me few options except sitting by the gate. Not entirely their fault but it was handled poorly imo.
Then a couple of years later, my family and I were subjected to monströsefraukaren flight attendant manager who gave our ticked seats away, threatened family members, generally behaved power mad. The airline could have cared less in response. Sucks, but I'll never make the mistake of giving them money ever again.
“I’m not German…”
“…Frankfunt.”
Some years ago I was disembarking a LH flight from FRA-IAD, and the A330 parked at a remote stand. There were two moon buses that pulled up: one at the front door for first and business class, one at the rear for the back of the plane. I was hanging out by the front of the front door moon bus, and we were just standing there, and after the final FA boarded, she told me...
Some years ago I was disembarking a LH flight from FRA-IAD, and the A330 parked at a remote stand. There were two moon buses that pulled up: one at the front door for first and business class, one at the rear for the back of the plane. I was hanging out by the front of the front door moon bus, and we were just standing there, and after the final FA boarded, she told me that someone on the flight had a laptop stolen, and that the police were going to be involved, and would likely make everyone open their bags for a check.
I didn't have the heart to tell her that no, that wasn't going to happen.
But I thought it remarkable that she didn't give it a second thought that police could simply search people's bags because they wanted to. Because I don't know German law, but in the USA, er...no. No they can't.
Is that a German thing? I don't know. I realize that this isn't analogous to telling on someone for not using their ticket segments in the order that they're issued, but it does show a blind allegiance to rules and perceived authority. Very strange.
TSA can search your bags , no ?
Note corrected email
I have a current payment issue with condor.
They double charged me for the prime seat. I paid the cost to select the seat upon check in online. Got the boarding pass for the prime seat.
Upon check in. Condor says they want 500 euros to fly for the prime seat. I’m like I paid for it. Here’s the receipt you issued. Classic German CS. Pay it cuz system says so. Or you...
I have a current payment issue with condor.
They double charged me for the prime seat. I paid the cost to select the seat upon check in online. Got the boarding pass for the prime seat.
Upon check in. Condor says they want 500 euros to fly for the prime seat. I’m like I paid for it. Here’s the receipt you issued. Classic German CS. Pay it cuz system says so. Or you don’t fly.
I paid it just cuz to get home. Deal with it later.
Condor CS refused to anknoledge any original online payment despite sending them their own receipts. So. They won’t refund anything.
Disputed with BofA. They sided in my favor. Thinking….ok done.
4 days letter I get a demand letter form condor revenue management saying there was a charge back of the entire amount(including the amount they say I never paid them all of the sudden). They want payment in 4 days or they will escalate and send to court and collections.
I sent all my documentation back to them. And they said. They demand money from customers who dispute CC charges. I’m like. That’s not in your merchant agreement. You can’t go after the customer if you lose with the CC processor.
This is where it stands. I paid nothing extra. But am I gonna get a bailiff in California all of the sudden or arrested upon entry to Germany?!?
Ben. If you want the full documentation. Email me. It’s also on flyertalk too.
Help would be appreciated.
To clarify. I still paid the amount of the online check in price for the seat. So I’m not asking for a full refund. I was still net charged the amount offered and paid via online check in.
Just engage Dr. Böse. It's very easy.
"They want payment in 4 days or they will escalate and send to court and collections."
How much is Condor trying to collect from you? $500, or $500 x 2 (one payment for the online check-in payment, and one payment to board the aircraft)?
"They demand money from customers who dispute CC charges."
Not sure what that means. Do you know?
"You can’t go after the customer if you lose with the CC processor."
They...
"They want payment in 4 days or they will escalate and send to court and collections."
How much is Condor trying to collect from you? $500, or $500 x 2 (one payment for the online check-in payment, and one payment to board the aircraft)?
"They demand money from customers who dispute CC charges."
Not sure what that means. Do you know?
"You can’t go after the customer if you lose with the CC processor."
They can, actually; it's becoming more and more common to see receipts that include wording along the lines of "if for some reason the credit card processor doesn't make good on the charge, the person who made the charge will owe the money directly." This wording isn't required to allow a merchant to go after someone for payment, btw.
Doesn't this also mean that Lufthansa will see significant new losses in future as a result of people now being allowed to drop segments owing to changed circumstances? So, in their petty effort to get EUR414 from a highly loyal elite traveler, they've probably lost millions of euros.
I experience great schadenfreude every time Spohr's Lufthansa causes its own trouble, usually due to their misadventures in trying to skirt the law, screw passengers or just straight up discriminate against passengers based on their ethnicity. Never in my life have I had such a bad experience in first class on an airline, only to find that their poor service is incredibly common and seems almost predicated on inflicting maximum suffering. May as well be LuftKafka.
So typically German - obsess about the minutiae of rules and tie yourself up in knots trying to the follow them beyond any semblance of practicality or common sense. This couldn’t have happened to a more deserving company!
British, too.
Agreed to you both. If only these experiences prompted change for the better. The lessons Spohr and his crew seem to learn are that they need to be more clever in how they screw their passengers.
The wild thing is that they did it in the past. If I remember correctly that was with a pax flying USA to Stockholm through Frankfurt who rebooked and skipped the Stockholm leg to fly to Hannover instead.
That's wild. I don't understand why LH thinks it's a good idea to sue customers.
People do that at their own risk. You may be rebooked through MUC if there's a disruption for example. So you may miss the new sector. But what's the point of suing customers?
So very German.
So very "curtain twitching" and "busy-body" . Many police mysteries are answered by canvassing the neighborhood for witnesses of anything unusual .
Alert I will be appropriating "curtain twitching" in daily speech if I can from now on.
Why would a FA pull an officious stunt ?
Answer : kiss up to the bosses .
Shows that's what the bosses want from their employees. It's a feature, not a bug. If I didn't know any better, I'd think LuftKafka was an updated airline version of the Milgram experiment, to see how much suffering people will inflict and/or endure for a "premium" experience before they leave.
Interestingly, this would seemingly allow even skipping the first segment of a ticket, as opposed to the typical practice of ditching the last one.
This also applies to any other airline operating in the German market.
They may have not updated their T&C, but the courts won't have different opinions.
Could this have any effect on how US airlines handle throwaway ticketing?
If they operate in Germany, very likely.
The real question is what happens when the passenger skips the second or third segment but wants to utilise the rest of the ticket.
I think it’s a matter of time until hidden city/throwaway ticketing is explicitly allowed. And airlines will adapt just as they did without change fees.
You wrote from Greece to Saudi Arabia via Germany. Should it say from Saudi Arabia to Greece?
@ JD -- It was a roundtrip ticket from Greece to Saudi Arabia. The portion from Saudi Arabia to Greece was the return flight.
Add a stopover in Beirut , and deplane in Beirut by mistake ?
Éla, re, why are you going to KSA anyway... and, what malaka routes through Germany to get there?! Have some pride... Hellas finally pays its debts, and you give MORE money to Berlin... oof.
Incredible. The fact, the FA would take the time to report this to her higher-ups within Lufthansa blows me away.
Vi are only following orders ( Lufthansa FA probably)
The FA wanted to accumulate Brownie Points .
That's the culture Spohr has cultivated - when your CEO travels with bodyguards and sends security after fans who ask for selfies, and Jews are collectively punished for the perceived misbehavior of a few, frontline employees naturally believe their job includes informing on customers.
Interesting, it is bizarre that a FA decided to snitch, when they have no obligation and little incentive to do so, perhaps it's just German culture to be a stickler for rules perhaps.
Regardless, this is a positive outcome, I do also think there probably are reasonable things that could be required to show proof of intent of following through on the original ticket, i.e. hotel bookings, reservations, etc.
That's no way to treat passengers, demanding proof. Luftkafka constantly lies, obviates and mistreats passengers and they're rarely forthcoming with information until compelled by force of law.