Germany's cartel authority, the Bundeskartellamt, is set to
reveal the verdict from its inquiry into whether Lufthansa's corporate
contracts illegally enable the airline to gain access to confidential
competitive information, according to a German government source. "It
should be delivered in the next couple of weeks or by the end of November at
the latest," the source told BTN.
"We are in the final phase."
The Bundeskartellamt in April 2011 launched the probe
regarding a contentious clause in contracts that required corporate clients to
instruct card issuers to forward their payment data to Lufthansa's card-issuing
subsidiary, AirPlus International.
Lufthansa voluntarily responded with new contracts for 2012
that gave clients the option either to forward data about payments made to all
airlines or to forward data only about Lufthansa and its partner airlines.
However, if clients chose the latter option, they would be entitled only to
upfront discounts, not any back-end rebates. According to Hans-Ingo Biehl,
director-general of German travel managers' association VDR, the
Bundeskartellamt was not satisfied with this remedy, prompting Lufthansa to
propose a new clause for 2013.
The most recent draft of the clause sent by the
Bundeskartellamt to VDR for comment continued to require clients to authorize
forwarding of data about Lufthansa and partner airlines, but did not tie this
stipulation to the provision of back-end rebates. "Only Lufthansa and
partner airline data will be provided, but we don't know what the whole of the
contract will look like," said Biehl. "It may be there will no longer
be any back-end rebates."
Biehl added that it is not clear how data would be filtered
so that only information about Lufthansa and partners is forwarded to AirPlus.
However, Biehl said he is "optimistic" that the final verdict from
the Bundeskartellamt will satisfy his members.
According to a written Lufthansa statement to BTN, the
carrier supports Bundeskartellamt's investigation. "There has not been any
further regulation to our procedures or any claim of misuse by any
authority," Lufthansa wrote. "Lufthansa always follows the
expectations and feedback received by customers. In this regard we had already
applied changes for 2012, such as making data transfer voluntary (not
mandatory), giving our customers the choice. For the 2013 contracts, further
changes will apply to meet market and legal requirements."
Lufthansa's corporate contracts have been controversial on several counts. Another source of contention was a clause requiring clients to write checks to Lufthansa, which would be cashed if they failed to meet agreed volume or marketshare targets. [See clarification below.] A Lufthansa spokesperson claimed that clause never had been enforced and in 2011 formally was removed from all contracts following an outcry from customers.
CLARIFICATION, Oct. 22: According to a Lufthansa spokesperson, a clause in the carrier's contracts that required clients to write checks that would be cashed should they miss volume or marketshare goals never was enforced, as suggested in a previous version of this report. The spokesperson claimed that clause in 2011 was withdrawn from all corporate contracts.