Man is being sued by airline for attempting to use a clever airline hack
Lufthansa is suing a man who intentionally missed a connecting flight from Frankfurt to Oslo in order to receive a cheaper fare.
The airline hack is known as the “hidden city” scheme, in which a person books a flight with a layover, and then intentionally stays at the layover city instead of continuing to the planned final destination.
CNN outlines the scheme using the following example: If a person’s intended destination is San Francisco, instead of booking an expensive direct flight from New York, they would choose to book a cheaper flight from New York to Lake Tahoe, with a planned layover in San Francisco. Then they intentionally skip the last connection to the trip’s final destination.
The court document (in German) explains that the unnamed male passenger booked a return flight from Oslo to Seattle, with a layover in Frankfurt. After using the outbound flight, instead of boarding the Frankfurt-to-Oslo return flight, he flew on a separate Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Berlin, according to CNN.
Lufthansa claims it has been unfairly gamed and is seeking compensation from the man to the tune of $2,385. The suit was initially dismissed by a Berlin court in December, but a spokesperson for Lufthansa confirmed to CNN that the airline had appealed the decision. A Lufthansa spokesperson tells Yahoo Lifestyle, “We presently cannot comment on this issue, as it is an ongoing court case.”
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