As reported in today's "Der Spiegel" at
http://www.spiegel.de/reise/aktuell/...443894,00.html
a German court has ruled in favour of a company that sued for damages when an airline refused the former's employees return flights on tickets with unused outbound coupons.
Based on a clause in its General Terms and Conditions, the airline had cancelled bookings on return flights when the outbound coupons had not been used. The company in question had booked return flight combinations for its employees, but used outbound and return flights from different ticket pairings.
In the test case, the passenger had been refused boarding by the airline as he had not used the outbound ticket of his return ticket and was forced to buy a new one-way ticket to fly home. The airline had argued that the return fare combination was a specially priced fare that could only be availed of if both outboud and inbound flights were flown.
The court ruled that German contractual law allows anyone to avail freely (i.e. wholly or partially or not at all) of a service for which they have fully paid.