In Germany, Ryanair suffered two sensitive slaps before the regional courts in Kleve and Berlin when it came to Laudamotion. Both courts overturned the "Ireland Clause" in the Conditions of Carriage. In Austria, the Korneuburg Regional Court already referred to this passage last year.

RightNow, a company specializing in the purchase of unused airline tickets, was sued. Passengers cede their taxes and fees to the service provider and receive a certain amount from them. RightNow then gets the money from the airlines and, if necessary, also takes it to court. If this is unsuccessful, the service provider is left with the costs, since the passengers are literally “off the hook” with the purchase of receivables.

However, the low-cost airlines Ryanair, Easyjet and Wizzair do not show the taxes and fees on their tickets. It is argued that the respective national legal situation would make the sole disclosure of the final price permissible. The consequence of this is that if passengers who have not flown want their taxes and fees back, then customer service comes up with the fairy tale that they did not pay any taxes at all. Various courts have declared this practice inadmissible in individual cases, because the taxes and fees are simply factored in, but do not have to be paid by the airlines if the flight is not taken. A nice basket of money for the lowcosters.

Ryanair in particular has something against assignment to service providers, who then get back exactly this “Körberlgeld”. However, for legal reasons, airlines are obliged to reimburse taxes in the event of no-show or cancellation on request. The specialist provider was only able to establish itself because of the customer-hostile behavior of various airlines.

The portal specialized in legal reporting Juve.de reports that the long courts in Kleve and Berlin have ruled that the choice of law clause anchored by Ryanair in the conditions of carriage is so incomprehensible that it is "ultimately abusive and therefore legally ineffective". In the specific cases, it was also about flight tickets for Laudamotion connections. In this regard, the courts held that Irish law could at most be applied to Ryanair transport contracts, but not to those concluded for the Austrian subsidiary Laudamotion. This has no point of reference to Irish law and could not do this in the context of the options that transport companies are allowed to undertake due to the lack of points of contact. In principle, in international air traffic it is possible that the home country of the airline, the place of departure or the destination can be selected for the legal status. With Laudamotion this would have been Austria, Germany or Spain in the specific cases, but Ireland would not.

The two German courts also found that the choice of law clause in the case of a refund of taxes and fees or due to the "Corona lockdown" is of no importance anyway, because EU regulation 261/2004 stipulates that the air fare and the taxes are to be reimbursed within seven days.

RightNow also experienced a well-known pattern for those tickets where only taxes and fees were claimed, as Ryanair strictly refuses to communicate the amount of taxes and fees. The consequence of this was that the service provider filed a lawsuit for surrender and, in a second step, sued for reimbursement. A very complicated procedure, but apparently the only one that leads to financial success.