The plane on the ground, the trip canceled, the money – gone anyway. At least for now. Because whoever goes on a trip by plane usually pays for it in advance. The full price is due at the time of booking, even if it is to start months later. For a flight to the USA or Thailand with the whole family, that can quickly turn into a large four-digit sum. A little questioned practice until Corona came. When the borders closed in spring 2020 and lockdowns made travel impossible in many countries, countless – already paid – flights were canceled.
The legal situation in the European Union is actually clear: If a flight is canceled, the passenger is entitled to a replacement or to the “full reimbursement of the ticket costs to be paid within seven days”, so it is in the corresponding regulation. But during the pandemic, the airlines were simply no longer able to pay out so much money in a short period of time. As early as May 2020, the repayment claims in Germany alone totaled four billion euros, calculated the German Travel Association.
Telephone hotlines were no longer available, there was no answer to e-mails and online forms on which the relevant applications could otherwise be submitted with a few clicks disappeared from the websites overnight. At the Arbitration Board for Public Passenger Transport (SÖP), 2020 submitted almost 60 percent more arbitration requests, more than 41,000 in total – although there were far fewer flights that year due to Corona. Still not all tickets have been reimbursed, reports Ronald Schmid, company spokesman for the online portal Fairplane, which tries to collect the money from the airlines for a commission for the passengers. This applies above all to flights that are not booked directly with the airline but via brokerage portals: “The companies involved shift responsibility to one another.”
The corona crisis revealed the great weakness of the already not particularly consumer-friendly prepayment system, argue consumer advocates. The passengers granted the airlines an interest-free loan. “The principle of prepayment is like a flash in the pan that must always be fed in order not to go out immediately,” says Klaus Müller, board member of the Federation of German Consumer Organizations (VZBV). The association launched an initiative a few months ago: the aim is to ensure that in future flights only have to be paid for when they actually take off.
Now they are stepping up again: a recent survey shows that passengers would be prepared to pay a little more money for it. Prices would have to rise by almost four percent if the airlines were to procure the money they would otherwise collect from the flights paid for in advance, in the form of loans, for example, according to the result of an expert report by the Federal Association of Consumer Centers at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts commissioned.
For a 200-euro ticket, that would be a surcharge of eight euros – and, according to the results of a Forsa survey on behalf of the VZBV, three quarters of those surveyed are willing to pay. Only 20 percent prefer the cheaper variant with prepayment. “After a long time of waiting, consumers are now taking advantage of the opportunity and are increasingly booking air travel. But they have also become more cautious,” emphasized VZBV board member Müller Süddeutsche Zeitung. Fewer and fewer are willing “to give the airlines an interest-free loan for months in advance.”
Legally, the prepayment practice has the blessing of the highest authority. It does not represent “any unreasonable disadvantage for passengers”, the Federal Court of Justice ruled in 2016. That is why there is no need at Lufthansa to change anything in the previous payment method. Incidentally, prepayment with Deutsche Bahn, local public transport or event tickets is also common practice, argues the airline. Cheap early bird rates are “not economically feasible” without prepayment.
The advance payment has another big advantage for the airlines: the utilization of the plane is predictable. Those who have already paid are more likely not to jump off at short notice. Ronald Schmid from Fairplane, who is also a lawyer specializing in aviation law, does not want to deny that companies need a certain degree of planning security to operate economically. Although the passenger rights portal earns its money from the fact that everything does not always run smoothly when flying, Schmid also advocates changing the prepayment system. His suggestion, in order to meet the airlines’ wish for predictability at the same time: “You could make a deposit in advance and pay the rest shortly before departure.”
Air traffic is international, so it is best to settle this question at a European level, as has also been done with passenger rights, demands consumer advocate Müller and appeals to the new federal government to act as quickly as possible. Ronald Schmid suggests that you should also place another topic at the same time: In contrast to package tours, where the coverage was only topped up after the experience of the Thomas Cook bankruptcy, there are air trips that can be purchased directly from the Airline books, no bankruptcy protection. However, as a result of the pandemic, airline bankruptcies must be expected, says Schmid, “and then customers currently have no chance of getting their money back”.