Using segments in order -is the end in sight?

[albatross710]

While doing a booking on the Lufthansa website, I notice I was given this option :

Would you like a flexible flight sequence?

I would like to benefit from the best offers and will use my flights in the booked sequence
I would like to have the flexibility to change the sequence of my flights

Seems like it would be good to have more of this flexibility.

Alby

 

[MEL_Traveller]

While doing a booking on the Lufthansa website, I notice I was given this option :


Seems like it would be good to have more of this flexibility.

Alby

Lufthansa has been offering this feature for a long time now (at least a few years IIRC).

Dun seem to have caught on... although isn't there now some rule against penalising pax who fail to use the outbound ticket in Europe (ie the return doesn't get auto-cancelled)?

 

[jsoprano]

IIRC, the only reason why LH is offering this is because they lost a high profile court case back in 2010, where a passenger sued them because he/she couldn't use the return leg after failing to board the first leg. This was in conflict with German consumer law.

Now the way LH get's around it these days is to offer both options and make the customer actively choose one or the other. The non-flexible option is priced competitively, while the other one is I guess simply the sum of each flight on the ticket priced individually in a Flex booking class.

Edit: just checked, it doesn't seem to make a difference where the legs are priced separately i.e. a simple FRA-TXL-FRA return flight returns same pricing for both options. However, what this aims at is to avoid having people taking advantage of lower pricing from certain markets, i.e. a J trip CAI-FRA-JFK will often be significantly cheaper than FRA-JFK only.

So with this example, a J return CAI-FRA-JFK is 1,700 EUR using the non-flexible option (i.e. fly all segments in order as booked), while the flexible option is 9,950 EUR on the same dates and flights. (Note that FRA-JFK J rtn on the same dates is 2,700 EUR, so that's what's behind these 2 options.)

 

[MEL_Traveller]

thanks for the explanation - I couldn't remember the details behind why LH allows it!

 

[albatross710]

So with this example, a J return CAI-FRA-JFK is 1,700 EUR using the non-flexible option (i.e. fly all segments in order as booked), while the flexible option is 9,950 EUR on the same dates and flights. (Note that FRA-JFK J rtn on the same dates is 2,700 EUR, so that's what's behind these 2 options.)

OK thanks.