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.

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?