> “Purchasing a ticket to a point beyond the actual destination and getting off the aircraft at the connecting point is unethical,” according to the letter by American, which isn’t party to the case. “It is tantamount to switching price tags to obtain a lower price on goods sold at department stores.”<p>What in the world? How is that comparison anywhere near remotely justifiable? Absolutely ridiculous.<p>> American Airlines Group Inc., in a letter to travel agents on its website, suggested it will have to raise fares if it keeps losing money from the practice.<p>Yes, please do. Price each ticket based on what it costs and a fair margin, not based on competitive meta-market games.<p>I can only assume that airlines are engaging in potentially unethical pricing themselves. For example, imagine if an airline delivers service from A->C and is low cost. A large competitor airline has no direct route, but flies A->B and B->C, and so offers A->B->C for the same price as the first airline. The route is actually below cost (or has a substantially smaller margin), but the airline offers it anyway to harm its competitor and to keep passengers within its brand. I don't know if I consider this unethical or not, but it's certainly no <i>less</i> ethical than customers taking advantage of hidden city routes for a lower price.
This sounds absurd. This is the best analogy i've come up with:<p>A Sandwich shop sells half sandwiches at 5$ and full sandwiches at 6$<p>You, and a friend would both like half a sandwich. Instead of ordering two separate halves. You order only 1 full sandwich and cut it in half yourself.<p>Now the sandwich shop is suing you because you paid $6 for one sandwich, and only ate half of it. That's instead of paying 10$ for two half-sandwiches like the shop would like.<p>----------<p>I think if they don't want people to buy a product, then they shouldn't sell it.<p>Either lower the price of A -> B tickets, or make sure that tickets from A -> B -> C cost no less than A -> B<p>OR they could ignore this altogether and continue to sell A-B tickets at a premium realizing that people will only buy them for convenience.
This type of purely nuisance punitive lawsuit should wind up biting both Orbitz and the airlines in the ass.<p>The crucial thing that this website owner must do is keep this story in the media. He will have to make himself available to various news outlets--sometimes on short notice. Of course, he will need to consult with his attorney.<p>Unless I'm missing something, as long as he can weather the delays, this appears to be a slam dunk.
Ignoring the merits of the lawsuit, I don't see how Skiplagged could ever be a big business. If it succeeds, it will result in its own destruction: the airlines will either eliminate hidden-city ticketing (i.e. reduce the 'hub premium') or otherwise prevent people from doing this (e.g. charge people extra if they don't complete their flight).<p>I actually thought that airlines have always threatened to 'claw back' the fare difference from travelers that did this, but I may be mistaken.
The owner of Skiplagged actually did an AMA almost a month ago: <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2o831k/i_run_skiplagged_a_site_being_sued_by_united/" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2o831k/i_run_skiplagge...</a>
to put this in laymans terms:<p>imagine you want to go from city A to city B<p>normally you would search for tickets from A-B<p>however, during your search, you would NOT see tickets that go from A-B-C.<p>why is that relevant? sometimes tickets from A-B-C are cheaper than A-B. so you would buy a ticket (A-B-C) and simply leave the airport of city B (not boarding the B-C flight).<p>the website in question made it easier to find these types of tickets. These tickets are commonly known as "hidden-city" tickets.<p>the airlines would prefer you to spend more money on an A-B flight rather than buying the cheaper A-B-C ticket.<p>they are now suing this website to enforce their preference on consumer choice.<p>if there were something illegal going on, it would be limited to your individual contractual obligations as the owner of an airline ticket. (there could be a term that requires you to actually be present on the airplane for an A-B-C flight)<p>This website is simply _enabling_ people who intend to violate this (potential) term of their airline ticket agreement.
Can someone explain the harm this causes the airlines? I get there's a bit of an opportunity cost because they'll have an empty seat, but apart from that? I feel there's something more here
While this might be an unpopular opinion but layover or not the passengers are still on the manifest for the final destination.
This means that if they decide to use this method they'll get off at the layover without telling anyone about it. This act alone can will cause delays while the flight crew and the airport staff will try to locate the missing passengers. Additionally depending on the security situation at the time and other conditions such as if it's the same aircraft or not of if they've checked in luggage (intentionally or by misstake since you can always apply for missing luggage and you'll get it delivered to you after a day or 2) this trick can lead to complete off boarding of the aircraft and a secondary security screening of all the passengers and the checked in luggage.<p>Even if this event will only happen once in a 100 flights it will still cost the airline, the airport, and the people enough time and money for everyone really pissed about this nonsense.<p>While i agree that the law suit might be slightly out of place, i think there are some good reasons why this practice isn't kosher.
Tho the fact that it's hard or near impossible to buy the same tickets directly without going trough a booking agent that can fix the price for you kinda sucks, i would think that most people would want to kill that guy that made them wait for 2 hours while they got their shit screened again just beause he tried to save 50$...
A smart airline would flag few people that do this and put them in a high-touch queue where the airline confirms if they intend to stay on for the final leg of the flight. If no, the airline modifies the passenger's flight details and makes it an A-B flight, and the seat on the B-C flight is marked available for purchase (maybe at a discount last-minute type price). If Yes, nothing changes. This way the airline can still sell that ticket. Savvy customer is happy with high-touch customer service, airline makes more money.
Can someone give me some examples where this tool works out well? I live in a hub city (MIA) so I can't seem to find any results in their search (or is their site overloaded?)
I wonder how big of an impact such passengers have on environment. Imagine if half of the people who bought tickets on A->B->C flight decided to stay in B->C. They leave the airline in a position where they can't resell the empty seats, so the jet flies half-full while still using the pretty much the same amount of fuel (the impact of passengers is marginal). If you scale this behaviour up, an airline ends up flying 2x as many B->C flights as needed, thus literally wasting half of the fuel on that route.<p>I don't think it's very ethical to deliberately introduce inefficiencies to a system for personal gain, especially if it leads to wasting scarce resources. Being a responsible human being means caring about other things than just money.<p>Also, it's hard for me to feel compassion for passengers exploiting this trick - air travel is totally underpriced already, casual passengers pay much less than they should actually pay to cover the operating costs (not to mention externalities). People complain about algorithmic pricing, but that actually makes air travel affordable for a typical person, where a fixed pricing scheme would not.
What I don't understand is this statement:<p>> "Airlines have told Orbitz that a traveler caught on a hidden-city routing is subject to having his ticket voided without refund, the Internet travel company said today in a statement."<p>How in the world can they ever prove this unless I as the passenger explicitly tell them that I'm on a hidden-city route? Surely, a simple "I was feeling too ill to catch the second flight, so stepped out" would be something they can't contest.<p>I understand that as the seller they have the right to refusal passengers but it seems like their combative stance is akin to the music/movie industries attitude towards torrents. I would think that both Orbitz and United would be better off on-boarding an "if you can't beat them, join them" mantra. This whole episode could have been flipped on it's head if the headline read "Skiplagged officially endoresed by United and Orbitz". Imagine the number of passengers they'd attract! I'm assuming that the market for flights is demand elastic to some extent. This is anecdotal based on my own buying pattern though.
So Awesome
Born in Bangladesh, Zaman grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., and graduated with a bachelor's degree in computer science at age 20 from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He lives in Manhattan and works at a technology start-up that he declined to name.<p>Zaman said Skiplagged is just a "side project."
The definition of "hidden city ticketing" appears to be "book A -> B -> C, get off at B".<p>Out of curiosity, is it all possible to book A -> B -> C, and travel the B -> C leg?<p>Would the airline sell your seat if you didn't show up at A?
I don't understand. These types of websites have existed for a long time. This is nothing new. Most people have found out that hidden-city ticketing doesn't work either on round-trip flights because the airlines will cancel the rest of the trip if they find out. It only works for one-way trips with carry-on bags only.
The owner of Skiplagged did an AMA on reddit a month ago: <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2o831k/i_run_skiplagged_a_site_being_sued_by_united/" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2o831k/i_run_skiplagge...</a>
What's the appeal of this site? I just did a flight search from SFO to LGB, and fares seem to be generally higher than anything I've found on Google Flights (which is insanely good). I did a search from SFO to Munich, and it can't even find flights.
His legal fund is here:<p><a href="http://www.gofundme.com/skiplagged" rel="nofollow">http://www.gofundme.com/skiplagged</a><p>I encourage everyone to donate.