If I run into this kind of situation and find I can buy a one-way return ticket, and if that violates the airline’s policies — which, I note, are NOT laws — and causes the airline to “lose” money through some fancy number shuffling — tough stuff. The problem’s with their pricing, in that scenario, not my buying.

I have a friend who flew from England to Hong Kong years ago on a holiday, his first to the Orient. enamored, he quickly landed a job, and as the return portion part of his ticket was set to expire in a few months, he, in a fit of silly magnamity, deiced to inform the airline it could resell his seat as he wouldn’t be using the return portion of his ticket. He fully understood he couldn’t request a refund, as he wasn’t entitled to one on his el cheapo ticket.

The airline’s response to his generous and principled going-an-extra-mile? — pr so he thought of it: the airline bursquely informed him he couldn’t get a refund, which he, by his own account, dreamily told them, “fine, I don’t mind at all,” but whoever he was talking to went on to demand he pay a penalty that amounted to a ludicrous 2/3rd’s or so of the cost of his return ticket! When he began coming back down out of the clouds and understood what was being said, he was taken aback.

It degenerated to the point the airline threatened to pursue legal action against him — in Hong Kong AND England.

Needless to say, he never flew that airline again (long since gone belly up).

It’s one of the most unbelievable such stories I’ve ever heard. He actually took extra steps to enable the airline to make a few extra pounds — and they threatened him.

I think Congress needs to investigate airlines. They are gouging people for fares. Case in point, you look for a fare, find one and select it but then before you purchase it, you get buyers remorse and don’t get it. You then do a search again and much to your surprise, that same flight you just changed your mind on has gone up in price. How can that be? An average person would say, they sold the ticket and it must have been the last one. Fair enough.

Now, open your browsers options, clear your cookies and then disallow cookies. Close your browser and reopen it. Try the search again. How about that? The flight went back to the same price you got the first time you looked at it! Now go to Expedia and try it. Well, well, well, Expedia won’t even let you search if your cookies are turned off. Now why is that? Is it perhaps because the cookie it put on your PC keeps track of what you want and then tells the site to raise the price if you keep looking? Hmmm, one wonders huh?

I think the airlines should not use your computer to raise pricing. That should be illegal. If you buy a bus ticket, it costs the same a month out as it does five minutes before you board the bus. So why do the airlines gouge you using your own computer to assist them in raising pricing? That is BS and Microsoft was investigated and fined for using similar tactics with their internet browser back in the 90′s.

The airlines explain this by saying the fuels costs vary and so do the jet taxiway taxess. BS, Airlines buy their fuel in advance, sometimes years ahead -all so that the price of gas to fly the planes is no longer a variable cost but a fixed cost. The only time the price of the ticket should change is when they use up the fuel they bought in one lump sum and start using a new lot they paid more for. As for the taxiways, I believe it’s another another scam, one would guess you pay the same taxiway tax at each airport. The governments don’t typically add premiums to their taxiway tax just because a plane landed in rush hour!

Food for thought….

That was a long post. I’m out of breathe just reading it. I appreciate the attempt athough unfortunately, much of what you wrote on the legal side isn’t true.

1. The definition of contract is very inadequate. Both sides merely need to understand the major terms for it to be valid. That’s why the contract of carriage concept works.

2. Every frequent flier understands that if you violate the contract of carriage which includes throwaway tiickets, back to back, and hidden city tickets, you are subject to repricing and your travel agenecy faces a debit memo.

3. Your argument that the airline suffers no damages doesn’t work. Loss of profit is an adequate basis to support a damage claim. Basically, if you followed the contract the profit would have been $100, but since you didn’t they only made “$40″ profit. The remaining $60 is damages.

4. The new ticket as a new contract is a novel idea, but, the old contract is still in play and the act of purchasing a new ticket violated the old contract and the airline takes advantage of the remedies in place there.

5. The airline promotion concept actually exists in hotels. If you book a hotel with Hilton or Starwood using points and you no-show, the hotels have the option of returning the points and charging your credit card for the full rack rate. It’s in the contract. It happened to me at one hilton garden inn and I won’t ever stay at that hotel again.

You also see that with time share promotions. If you receive a reduced hotel rate to attend a time share and you don’t show up, the hotel reprices the room rate.

6. The unknown amount defense doesn’t work. An amount is “known” is it can be ascertained with certainty, even if a dollar amount is not specified. In this case, if its pegged to the rack rate, or a market rate, then it’s sufficiently specified in the contract.

Good try, but as you stated, contract law is very difficult unless you’ve been specifically trained.

At the end of the day, the airlines have legions of attorneys and very large firms with very large salaries who created the carriage of contract. The only real flaw is that the terms and conditions are often offensive to common US business practices which is why airlines are most vulnerable in small claims court.

In this ticket contract, my guess is that no one in their right mind would knowingly enter into a contract that REQUIRES them to return on a certain date, or pay a penalty for no show. I would bet that there is NOTHING spelled out in the contract that says, if you miss your flight, you owe us $x. Further, if you assume that you do “owe the airline” a debt of “riding on their airplane” if you’ve agreed to, there are NO DAMAGES to the airline if you don’t! What that means is, if the airline decided to sue on THIS ticket contract, they could win. But, the damages would be ZERO.

Now, for a NEW ticket, one way or whatever–that’s a NEW contract. I would bet that there are not restrictions that would say, “if you book a ticket as “john Smith”, for example, we will just decide to confiscate your NEW ticket, and, in addition, since we are acting as judge and jury, we will include the old contract and collect that as well, ignoring the damages issue, since as “judge and jury”, we can do anything we want that benefits us.

Notice: It seem me to me that there is no person that understands that they will OWE the airline if they don’t take the flight and can be sued for an unknown amount.
As an extreme example of this, suppose there is another clause in the contract you weren’t aware of. Lets say, a new airline is trying to look successful. They sell tickets for $50, round trip across the country as a promotion. Part of the “fine print” says that, if you miss any segment, including the first one, the last one, or both, you owe the airline $2,000. Would the airline win? I think not. Maybe they prove they were damaged because you didn’t go, resulting in looking bad to their investors. Proper notice of that term to you would be required. You’d even have be aware that you were agreeing to be sued. So, without agreement, there is no contract.

In another aspect of knowing you owe, lets say you know they almost never enforce the rule, and decide to sue you anyway. Did you “know” you owed the money? No, to the contrary, you knew they don’t charge customers… until now. Again, no contract term exists, if you didn’t agree you’d be charged and those charges would not be ignored.

Contract law unfortunately is a difficult subject for most of us, since we seldom have to decide these things. Nevertheless, we are subject to the effects of not understanding what a contract or contract term is, and is not.

I’d suggest that someone put up a site to allow all of us to insert any situation, and apply a very few key concepts of contract law to see what would happen if the contract were enforced by law. This would help decrease misconceptions about: Oral contracts, enforceable? Is understanding of the terms required to be enforceable? If you made an offer and don’t rescind it, are you bound if the other party accepts it later? What if the offer was “only done orally”? It is still binding, but it would be harder to prove without written evidence or witnesses.

More and more companies are taking advantage of consumers by obscuring the terms of onerous contracts, or simply charging consumers for things that they know would cost the consumer more time to pick up the phone and complain about and fix, than to just pay. When’s the last time any of us called about a dropped call? Internet or cable stopped working for a short time? That new one dollar fee for accessing something about your account that was already online?

As consumers, we must find a better way to fight these small battles efficiently. But this starts with some working understanding of contract law we can all use and apply daily.

The casino analogy is particularly apt in that flying is pretty much a crapshoot. You throw the (weighted) dice strictly as the airline demands. What you get for your bet is an opportunity to travel as scheduled. But the airline has no obligation to get you and your baggage to your destination at any particular time. They’re free to change the schedule at the last minute if it suits their needs, cancel a flight if it’s not full enough, and even make you buy another expensive ticket if their changes result in a missed connection. But if you need to change anything, or perhaps miss a flight due to a flat tire, you have to pay whatever penalties the airline decides because you’ve violated the solemn covenant you made when you bought the ticket.

I’m not aware of any other industry where corporate executives consider it Good Business to treat paying customers so shabbily. But they can get away with it because they know we have practically no alternative to their inferior product. No matter how much they abuse us, they know we’ll soon be back at the airport to queue up in our stockinged feet for more abuse.

I also appreciate your cojones in telling an attorney that’s he’s legally incorrect. LOL

I appreciate your point. However, I wasn’t discusing whether the contract of carriage was enforceable or not. My issue was whether it was ethical and in comformity with acceptable business practices. You can write anything in a contract, but that doesn’t make it ethical.

I submit that the airlines contract of carriage would be considered unethical in the overwhelming majority of industries.

I also appreciate the software analogy but it doesn’t really apply. Intellectual proprety is unique in law and ethics in that the base assumptions are not necessarily true. For example, stealing goods and services imporverishes the owner, while not true in intellectual property.

All politicians care about is gay marriage and abortion because it keeps them getting elected. Take on the airlines and they’d lose those contributions to their retirement funds, AND their constituents really wouldn’t care. Because the voters only really care about gay marriage and abortion too.

So everyone’s getting what they deserve.

Our only chance is to force a terminology change on the airline industry so that fees are now called “abortions” and poor service is called “gay marriage.” Then, at least, 50% of all customers would be 100% satisfied at all times.

OR, you could stop voting for politicians who don’t take on the airline industry, REGARDLESS of where they stand on abortion and gay marriage. There’s a concept! Taking a stand on something that would actually make a *difference* in this country. Wow.

I see your point, but I have to disagree. I don’t think it is ethical to price a good or service based upon how I use it and whether or not I even use the item. Once I buy the goods and services, they are mine to do with as I see fit. Thus the bread analogy works for me. I can’t think of any other industry that charges for non-use.

AA would make more money from Robert if they forced him to reschedule his ticket rather than buying a new one because of the punitive change fees. The wants to sell Robert a ticket for $230 that they would sell to anyone else for $80.

Go for it Robert–I bet AA isn’t smart enough to figure out what you’re doing.

When a flight is missed the computer cancels everything downline.
You can’t just cancel a flight without that happening downline.

The airlines can’t charge you for missing a flight but they can take away your frequent flyer miles and they can, and do, charge a travel agency who sells a ticket that is used in what they label fraudulent, i.e. bought as roundtrip but planned to be used as one way. The travel agency can lose its ticketing privileges if it doesn’t pay this ridiculous charge, and
the said agency has no control over how the ticket is used once it is sold
to the client. So how’s that for unfair? It could actually put the agency out
of business.

Been there, done that, but paid Delta $2000 for a $100 roundtrip ticket that was only used one way. No recourse.

The airlines will never learn but will continue to pull this as long as we continue to buy their tickets

Do I agree these are not “fair” rules? That would depend on what side of the counter I’m on!