Overview
- The European Court of Justice ruled that intermediary commissions form an unavoidable part of the ticket price when an airline allows a portal to issue tickets in its name.
- Airlines must reimburse those fees after cancellations even if they did not know the exact amount, clarifying earlier 2018 case law.
- The case arose after KLM refunded fares for cancelled Vienna–Lima flights but kept about €95 per passenger that Opodo had charged as a booking fee.
- Austria’s consumer association VKI brought the dispute, and the Austrian Supreme Court referred questions that led to the EU court’s interpretive ruling.
- The decision binds national courts across the EU and is likely to shape similar refund claims and airline–intermediary business practices.