The airlines can get all worked up about it, but there's no way they can stop it. (At most they can see a passenger doesn't make their connection the majority of the time and impose a penalty fee after so-many missed connections; but then they'll juse lose <i>any</i> revenue from that passenger.)<p>And why should they care? I paid the full price of the ticket. What's it to them where I get off?<p>Sure they might think they can sell me food or drinks in flight or annoy me with their stupid branded credit card on every single flight, but the fact is I paid for the seat. If I don't show for my initial departure flight, they don't get worked up about that. Why is skiplagging any different?<p>Because they want to make more revenue by making it more expensive to fly to my intended destination? Well... don't do that. This is the natural, economic response to their pricing games. If you make it a game, people will play the game. Don't cry when you can't win 'em all, airlines.
I remember this time in Asia I booked a flight to go back to Japan. I got Covid, so had to cancel the flight (the company considered I had to cancel the flight, not that they would not allow me in, as per their TOS).<p>This company had no-refunds for the flight I purchased, and I confirmed with a rep that I was never going to get the flight money back, no matter what I did, even if I cancelled.<p>It also costed money to cancel the flight though! And even then I would not get the money back. So the "cheapest" option was to watch my date come and a seat go empty. Which is really absurd, had I been allowed to cancel (for "free") even if I didn't get my money back it'd have been a big win for the company which could double book their now free seat and still get the money.<p>I should probably have pursued it further, I'm 100% sure the whole ordeal would have breached multiple regulations back in Europe, so probably in Asia too, but with Covid and I had just had a motorbike accident wasn't in the mood to fight it.
> <i>It comes after the airline barred a teenager from boarding a flight in the US after airport staff discovered he was planning to disembark at his stopover city.</i><p>Isn't that like, criminal interference in the welfare of a minor?
"It claims the website improperly acts as a middleman, "inserting itself between American [Airlines] and flight consumers", and promises to deliver savings, but often charges consumers more than if they had booked a ticket directly with the airline or an authorised agent."<p>Authorised agent? What does that mean? As far as I know, all the flight search engines use the ITA matrix service (<a href="https://matrix.itasoftware.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://matrix.itasoftware.com/</a>). Are they saying that's not a legitimate business? My point is, how is skiplagged different than the other search engines other than offering the hidden city ticketing option?
This sometimes works with trains in Europe too.<p>I discovered once through Seat 61 that if you want to travel from Amsterdam to Berlin, it's cheaper to book the train all the way to Prague. You can just get off the train in Berlin.<p>I did this a few years ago, but ended up going to Prague anyway.<p><a href="https://www.seat61.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.seat61.com/</a>
Related:<p><i>American Airlines sues travel website Skiplagged over ticket price ‘loophole’</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37202856">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37202856</a> - Aug 2023 (40 comments)<p><i>American Airlines barred teen for 3 years for "skiplagging" claims his father</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36779893">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36779893</a> - July 2023 (1 comment)<p><i>Teenager detained at airport after trying to use “skiplagging” trick</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36701669">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36701669</a> - July 2023 (78 comments)<p><i>Teenager ‘taken to security room and interrogated’ for throwaway ticketing</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36684460">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36684460</a> - July 2023 (151 comments)
A greedy airline is mad because they can’t be greedy enough! That’s basically it, if the tickets were priced properly and fairly, this wouldn’t be an issue to start with.
Imagine you go to a restaurant and order a menu because getting the menu is cheaper than just the entré and mains, and the leave before eating the desert and the restaurant is telling you that not eating your desert is against their terms of service!<p>The former airline executive considers it imoral? Give me a break the only thing the airlines want is that they keep an information assymmetry for determining price, they are allowed to play all the tricks to optimise the price but somehow consumers don't? If anything is immoral (and should be illegal) it is terms of service that disallow this.
I had a similar dilemma a few years ago when I moved to another country.<p>The round trip was about 1000€, but the one way trip about 5000€, which is just bullshit.<p>I would bet that as for skiplaggers, many people just get the round trip and never show up for the return one. Rather than a morally dubious choice, I ended up finding a one way ticket with Aeroflot for 700€, where I had a terrible experience that I'd rather not try again.<p>As a customer, I hated to be forced into this choice, especially for obviously complete nonsense like this.
I have absolutely no sympathy for the airlines. As I write this, I’m in the process of suing a well-known Canadian airline for lying about conditions leading to a flight cancellation. Unfortunately this is not a rare occurrence based on the forum I participate in.<p>Point being, they can shove their terms and conditions. They can start by following the law.
The exemple of the bottle of milk is not complete : it's like a bottle of milk cost 5$, but a bottle of milk and a Mars bar is 4$. You take the bottle of milk and the Mars bar and as you are on a diet, you leave the Mars before the shop. How is it illegal?
Why is the direct flight to LA more expensive than the flight to San Jose with a stop in LA? You'd think the price for the San Jose flight would be the price of the LA flight plus the price of the LA to San Jose flight.
There’s an interesting blindness on a forum full of tech workers to the idea of market pricing being divorced from COGS. That’s kind of the whole premise of our industry.<p>Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think skiplagging should be a crime or anything. But I also think the airline is well within their (legal and moral) rights to prohibit it contractually and to enforce that prohibition.
The airlines’ pricing irrationality is akin to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I486SX" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I486SX</a> where it cost Intel extra money to disable the floating point unit.
> <i>Businesses argue the practice amounts to fraud because customers are purchasing flights they don't intend to travel on</i><p>I got a set of pots and pans because it was cheaper than buying them individually, but I never intended to use the double boiler. Is that fraud?