I guess this headline makes one want to grab the pitchfork, but I don’t know if we will end in a better place if carriers are barred from following the pricing

I guess this headline makes one want to grab the pitchfork, but I don’t know if we will end in a better place if carriers are barred from following the pricing strategy at the core of this. LH is simply routing passengers like IP packages, where sometimes it may be more economical to, for example, go the long way around to get to the destination. In those cases, they want to charge you the (lower) price of your trip’s usefulness to you, irregardless of the (longer) route it took you to get there. Barring this practice will just make those flights more expensive, or potentially reduce competition on some rote that a carrier like LH does not service with direct flights. The narrower court case is simply a matter of contract law. Sure, there need to be exceptions for sudden sickness or actual changes of plans, but those are factual questions, not ones of law at issue here. I’m no fan of naive contract fetishism upholding the right to sign away your first-born n &Cs. But this issue here really does not strike me as overtly one-sided.