In this context and under German law, a reservation would be an enforceable contract between passenger and airline. If a passenger does not show up, the airline can sue for payment. Hence the proposal mostly shifts the burden of litigation to the airline.

In Germany, airlines have a strong incentive to refuse any refund. Courts are very slow to render decisions and the worst that can happen is being ordered to refund the original amount. Behaviour-correcting damages do not exist under German law. In combination this deters some passengers from pursuing their claim.

Edit: Airlines would also be ordered to pay court and lawyer fees which could be construed incentivising. Yet both fees are statutory capped and quite low for the average ticket price.

> the worst that can happen is being ordered to refund the original amount.

That just isn't true. The airlines often pretend that isn't the case, but just linking to, e.g., the site below usually make them pay without too much hassle.

https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-right...

Certain EU airlines, particularly Lufthansa and TAP, don't pay up very easily unless you hold status.

Doesn't reflect well on the EU if they let companies get away with that. It's a law, and systematically ignoring them should anger the hell out of the EU. Since these are big corps based in Europe, perhaps they get a more lax treatment.

They count on people not having the energy to push through to get their money, but in my experience they pay as soon as they realise you know your rights and is dedicated enough. But it’s the main reason I never fly Lufthansa any more when I can avoid it.

Individual countries are usually left to enforce these laws on their own. Many EU countries are already subsidizing their national carriers in one way or another, so they aren't always keen to push passenger rights. For example Germany notably allowed Lufthansa to illegally hold customers' funds for more than a year after cancelling flights during COVID.

Those are passenger rights, a set of rules different from German laws of contract. Also, for cancellations there is no compensation if the flight was cancelled early enough or if the airline can prove exceptional circumstances.

All airlines starting or landing in Germany have to follow those laws. It’s inconsequential whether they are directly codified in German law or not. It’s correct that they aren’t without conditions, but I don’t think anyone think they should be. They have to compensate you if they cancel the flight less than 2 weeks before departure. I’ve gotten €600 twice after different delays or reroutings.

So while you can have opinions about the exact conditions, you can’t argue there are none.

There are services like Airhelp [1] which do the legal part for you, for a small cut. I've used them several times when flights were delayed.

1. https://www.airhelp.com/

The fact that there is an entire business model built around helping passengers claim their rights due to the reluctance of airlines to attend to their duties should already be an alarm signal.

There are sites that charge a fortune to fill an esta in on your behalf too. Just because a scam is successful doesn’t mean there’s a problem with the normal way.

Same with tax refunds in my country, where its doable online in like, a half hour.

You can pay a company to do it for you, and onboarding with them takes longer than a half hour.

I used them in the past and they worked, but a colleague told me I was being an idiot and should do it myself. He was right, at least with British Airways, there's an online form that you fill out and money appears in your account. It took the same amount of effort as Airhelp.

I would use them only after trying to do it yourself.

Does not work with low costs :) They'll just say 'extraordinary circumstances'.

My daughter was trying to come home from university this summer and they canceled her flight twice while she was in line at security. Guess what Wizzair said.

She has claims opened with Airhelp now, we'll see what happens.

I would only resort to services like that if your case is really stuck, in my experince (with 4 different airlines).

A quick e-mail to the airline with the order number, stating the expected flight plan, and comparing it with the actual flight plan and a calculated delay have always worked, even with the cheaper airlines.

"Small cut" was 30% in my last experience.

> the worst that can happen is being ordered to refund the original amount. Behaviour-correcting damages do not exist under German law.

Maybe if they want to change the laws anyway, this is what they should fix instead. In particular, there should be punitive damages for everything illegal that are high enough that it's almost never profitable to break the law even if you get away with it a significant proportion of the time.

Allowing punitive damages would be a major change to the foundations of German civil law. German law (mostly and traditionally) thinks of damages as a means to make the other party whole rather than to incentivise a certain behaviour of the injurer. Hence German law is utmost reluctant to give anyone more than they suffered in losses.

Adding some obscure consumer protection rule is a much less controversial change to the law.

The traditional German legal doctrine sees the enforcement of fair business practices rather in the hands of the authorities than in those of consumers. Of course, there is little evidence of this to work in this or similar contexts.

> Allowing punitive damages would be a major change to the foundations of German civil law.

There ARE punitive damages the airline has to pay you if they cancel or delay your flight. It's EU law. See the sibling comment.

For instance if they cancel or delay a flight over 1500 km in the EU you're entitled to 400 Euro compensation on top of cost of ticket and other expenses you had due to it.

That's not punitive though. That's to compensate the traveler for caused inconvenience. It also happens to work as some form of punishment yes, but it's by far not high enough to work as a deterrence.

You are correct that the provisions of EU law can be construed as punitive damages. That’s why I emphasised the German legal tradition. Also, those damages do not apply in all possible situations of cancelled flights and they do not punish withholding refunds for no reason. If the airline cancels three weeks prior and then refuses to pay, the EU law does not apply and the behaviour we would like to disincentivise is not to honour the refund claims rather than the cancellation.

> German law (mostly and traditionally) thinks of damages as a means to make the other party whole rather than to incentivise a certain behaviour of the injurer.

Does that include payment for time spent seeking a verdict?

Often but not invariably.

Well punishment is for Strafrecht.

And do you have evidence that the US style works? Or was that just a throwaway "of course the state doesn't work!" comment without justification?

Airlines are already overbooking flights.

The whole thing came up because airlines don't pay back customers in a timely manner. It can takes months to get your money back from airlines even when the airline is fully at fault.

IcelandAir gave me a credit instead of refund when they canceled my flight in early COVID days. I called asking for a refund and was refused. The credit expired before I could use it. Why is there an expiration? This was in excess of $2000. I’ll never fly IcelandAir again.

Since Iceland is in the EU, you should check a bit more if that's allowed. I'm pretty sure it isn't and when the credit expires you should still be able to collect the original amount, at least that is what happened in some other instances to avoid liquidity crisis with airlines and holiday agencies.

Iceland, like Norway where I'm from, is part of the European Economic Area[1] through the European Free Trade Association[2], but not a full EU-member. They get access to the EU single market, by agreeing to implement EU legislation in a number of areas.

It can be quite confusing at times. For example, both Iceland and Norway are part of the Schengen agreement[3], so in that respect we're "from EU" when traveling.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Economic_Area

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Free_Trade_Associatio...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Agreement

Its always confusing to people that "not all in Schengen are in the EU, and not all the EU are in Schengen".

Its incredibly useful for visa reasons though.

Iceland is not in the EU. They are in the process of joining since like a decade but have never completed their application. They are in the EFTA and the EEA however.

According to an Icelandic friend not fully joining the EU is on purpose. There are people on Iceland that enjoys the benefits of EFTA and EEA, yet does not want to fully tackle corruption. Iceland is the most corrupt Nordic country by far (yet on a global scale still pretty good).

Well yes and no, the topmost reason is that rural folk simply are very eurosceptic there (see polls on that matter) and the election system favors them a bit, so overall, the eurosceptic parties remain in power (for now). Though I've yet to see an analysis on the matter since Russia's imperialistic invasion of Ukraine.

My Ryanair Tickets were also converted to credits, but I was able to ask for money when they expired.

How is this not straight up fraud?

In (un)fairness it sounds like what all airlines do.

British Airways gave straight refunds automatically at the start of the pandemic.

The article covers it right at the end.

> “Everyone must be aware that at the time of booking you are entering into a contract of carriage that is subject to certain conditions, such as no-show and/or rebooking fees.”

They are mandated to pay you back if they fail to provide service. However, that doesn't help you in case of a bankruptcy. Paying months ahead is basically giving the airline an unsecured loan and lots of German consumers were hit when Air Berling went bankrupt. Under German bankruptcy laws even a credit card chargeback won't help you, that money is mostly gone.

"How would an airline capacity plan with just a reservation?"

Responsibly perhaps?

So they make the most effort to make sure the service is delivered since it will only be paid if they can deliver? I know it is a novelty idea paying for only the received service when received, something never been used throughout the history before as one always had to pay well in advance and then may or may not receive the service paid for, but perhaps we could get used to this very novel and revolutionary idea, no? : )

I believe this paying for something not delivered yet and run circles getting back if not delivered at all on the agreed terms is in the benefit of the airlines. Being abused many many times. Otherwise we wouldn't have needed extensive and stict regulations about compensations. This may change. There is a desire for it from customers.

Will you be okay with prices going up significantly to account for the fact that scheduling is now done "responsively" and thus efficiency is at a much lower capacity? : )

Never mind that --- how am I supposed to plan a time critical journey if I don't know in advance if I'll actually have a seat on the plane?

This kind of pay-on-the-spot only works when there's tons of capacity, if you don't take this one, you'll get the next, no problem, and where the provider doesn't need 100% usage, i.e. where costs are incremental rather than fixed.

And airplane fails that criteria in both ways. This plan is bad for both airline and customer.

You sign a contract that requires the airline to fly on a certain date and you to pay on a specified date. The only change from today in the normal case is that the two dates are the same.

The big changes are in two unusual cases: ① The airline closes before you fly, such as Swissair, Air Berlin etc. In that case you don't pay. ② The airline cancels your reservation, as many did during the early covid phase. In that case you and the airline quarrel about nonperformance of the contract, just as you do now, but you have the money during the quarrel instead of the airline offering you a voucher.

They already plan deviously right now by overbooking.

s/deviously/optimally

I don’t care about the financial success of airlines but I sure as fuck don’t want jet fuel burned pushing around empty seats.

Sure you do. Airplanes should be at least 10% empty on average. High load factors are bad for the travellers.

If you want to save fuel fly 5% slower and save 10% fuel.

Are you saying maximizing load factors are worse for fuel economy or just slowing down would be a preferred cost saving measure in your opinion? Average load factor in the US is already <90%.

Either way, what about the unintended consequences for travellers if a slow down was mandated permanently?

You would need at least 15% more planes, pilots, ground personnel, etc... to handle the reduced bandwidth. For non-direct flights, fewer connections could be made likely increasing the airport population its ancillary services.

Airlines already do this from time to time usually when fuel costs outpaces pricing power:

https://www.reuters.com/article/airlines-fuelcells-kemp/refi...

When load factors get too high, recovery from irregular ops (weather, crew, or mechanical disruptions) becomes a nightmare for passengers. People end up stranded for days without available seats.

slowing down 5% adds 10 minutes flying time to a 3 hour flight. Drag varies with square of speed except when you get close to Mach 1 where it gets much worse.

Its also possible to fly 20% (36kft vs 30k) higher where drag for the same speed will be lower. Drag varies linearly with density.

An aircraft purposely designed for low fuel consumption could save 50% or more jet fuel without being significantly slower.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_D8

https://www.nasa.gov/topics/aeronautics/features/future_airp...

An 85% load factor still means you probably have a passenger sitting either side of you and a baby wailing somewhere in the distance, but now you're paying more money for your seat and arriving later.

Probably put an authorisation on the card at booking time, similar to how hotels do

It would make more sense for the payment to be put on escrow.