Regional Court Denounces Smart-Ticketing Practices Among Passengers

Introduction

On July 31 2009 the Cologne Upper Regional Court ruled on two aspects of Lufthansa's general conditions of carriage.¹ The Federation of German Consumer Organization challenged the carrier's practice of refusing to carry passengers who failed to use their tickets and coupons in the agreed sequence (ie, they skipped certain segments). The court held that the trend among passengers of so-called 'non-sequential use of coupons' or 'cross-border selling' undermined the airline's tariff structure and was not permitted in the applied conditions of carriage which formed an essential part of the contract of transportation between passengers and the airline. The court also ruled that passengers were not permitted to purchase tickets for a return journey, but use only the outward coupon of each ticket (so-called 'cross-ticketing').