Lufthansa return flight ticket validity

A colleague told us the following story over lunch, and I thought I'd ask to see if anyone has had a similar experience or advice?

He bought a Lufthansa return ticket for himself and his toddler son. Since his son was staying with the grandparents, he flew on his own to collect the son and bring him back to Munich. Before departing on the outward leg from Munich, he asked at the airport if its ok that the son wouldn't actually be flying with him on the outward leg, they said it was not a problem.

Upon arriving at the airport with his son to fly back to Munich, he found out his son's ticket had been cancelled as the outward leg wasn't used. He was forced to buy a new ticket, and complained to Lufthansa afterwards. They claimed that the ticket segments must be used in the order as outlined, otherwise its rendered invalid.

What annoys him is that this wasn't made clear to him when buying the ticket, and he was told it wouldn't be a problem beforehand. Does anyone have a similar experience, and does he have a legal leg to stand on here if he complains elsewhere?

I've done that with Ryanair several times and never had a problem.

I've done the same with Ryanair too, which is why I was shocked.

Lufthansa seem to have a very outdated ticket system, which doesn't seem fair at all.

Ryanair and Lufthansa are very different. All the 'established' airlines have this restriction, and it's usually clearly stated on every ticket.

I think the difference is you buy two singles with Ryanair.

Defiantly the big airlines say they would cancel your ticket if you didn't take the outbound. They are selling you a cheaper return ticket.

I can imagine that it might not be a problem on Ryanair, but on the national carriers a single ticket is quite often substantially more expensive than one of the cheaper return tickets, so an increasing number of people started buying returns and only flying the one leg. They've been playing this game for a few years now, not sure what happens if you only fly the first leg though, do they come chasing you for the difference? Rather doubt if they can do anything legally in that case though, you might just have missed the flight, or even worse, been bumped.

A few years ago I wanted to book a trip to the states which would have involved a lot of flying about within the states. I wanted to do a bit of driving while I was there but the cheapest way would have been to book a load of flights as one package and then miss out one of them. Before I booked the trip I checked with the airline, Delta, and they told me if I didn't turn up for one of the flights the whole trip would be cancelled as I would be classified as a no show which rendered all the flights as invalid!

If you only intend to use one leg of a return ticket, then for the love of God make sure it's the outbound leg.

He only has a leg to stand on if it wasn't in the T&Cs when purchasing the ticket. For a cheap ticket, I'd be surprised if it weren't.

As others have said, low cost carriers sell singles, not returns. The reason they do this is to avoid obligations they would otherwise have if you bought a return.

I've done my fair share of cross ticketing and even with that they say they reserve the right to cancel a ticket if they find out.

Ok, thats good to know for the future, thanks for the info. An expensive mistake for him, but at least they still managed to take the flight back.

BA do the same thing especially if the return flight is overbooked.

It worked with BA. I had a restricted ticket and needed to change the outbound flight. That was too expensive so I booked a new flight but I called BA and asked them not to wipe my return reservation and that worked. The second ticket was actually a throw-away returm, that is, I didn't use the return leg which was somewhere way off in the future as it was much cheaper than a single.

Note that supervisors have a lot of discretion. Your ticket is a return ticket and it is only the reservation that may get chopped. They can put it in for you again if you are nice to them and give them a good reason why you dropped your outbound leg (gaming the system doesn't count!).