8 ms·

This is unethical, basically he calls for jumping off of flights at layovers, which violates the terms of the ticket. There's even a security issue for the air

This is unethical, basically he calls for jumping off of flights at layovers, which violates the terms of the ticket. There's even a security issue for the airlines, because they need to check if your bags are flying unaccompanied. Ironic that the NYT cracks down on people evading its paywall but is selling content on doing the same for air travel.

r00fus 15y ago
Unethical? Hardly. It's just against their specific rules (which only exist so they can gouge you on certain fares). Is it ethical for airlines to charge you more for A->B than a flight going from A->B->C?
- hugh3 15y ago
  Is it ethical for airlines to charge you more for A->B than a flight going from A->B->C? I don't know. Is it obviously unethical for them to do so? It's a sensible observation that a subset of X should be priced lower than X, but is it a moral one? Or, if the airline can make more money by charging more for A->B than A->C via B then, heck, it's their airplane, let 'em do what they want!
  - rhizome 15y ago
    Why are ethics and morality being discussed in the context of business? They have their pricing strategy, I have mine. It's my travel money, let me do what I want.
    - ghshephard 15y ago
      Nobody who is commenting here cares (or I strongly suspect they don't care) about the Airlines and people making money. It's the hundred or so people who are sitting on the airplane that are being inconvenienced - possibly missing their own connections later on, that our concerns are for. In general, airlines don't like to have people's checked luggage travel separately from them - and they don't know if the missing person checked luggage or not. So, they either have to do a count, get everyone in their correct seat, or delay the plane until the person gets back on. It's a cute hack, but an annoying one for everyone caught up in it.
      - _delirium 15y ago
        I agree that's one concern, but it's not entirely clear to me what the division of responsibility for those waiting-around passengers is. You might blame the passengers causing the problem, but as a passenger I also expect the airline to anticipate and work around any frequent sources of disruption. If it's something that happens often enough to actually be a problem, then it's an operational problem and they should find some way to mitigate it. For example, they could include it as a factor when evaluating pricing strategies (the likely operations-disrupting effect of certain pricing strategies), or perhaps they could handle check-in and luggage-tracking differently, or they could police their fare rules more stringently to more strongly discourage it. But they should do something, if indeed it is a problem (I'm not sure it actually is). Creating an obvious arbitrage opportunity and then structuring your operations in a way that isn't robust to some proportion of people exploiting it wouldn't be a very responsible way to run a business.
        ghshephard 15y ago
        In the 15 years I've been flying actively, i've only once been on a plane where I was told to return to my seat so they could do a count. I'm presuming that was a situation where someone hopped off mid travel. So, this is really a rare scenario. I think most people who do this are savvy, which means they realize they are about to screw an entire planeload of people - so it's a fairly rare endeavor. The fact that the NYT was consulting with Trial Lawyers as to the legality of this, is some indication of how sketchy this behavior is. BTW - all of this thread applies to layovers where the plane lands, and some people deplane, while others stay in their seats. None of this applies to the situation where you have to get onto another plane, or, as I've had happen to me a couple times, they require you to exit the plane and then get back on. Particularly if you didn't check luggage. I'm fine with people playing that game - usually only causes a minute or two delay, if that.
        _delirium 15y ago
        Oh, yeah, I didn't even realize the other one happens. I've never had a connection where I didn't have to get off the plane, and usually I have to change planes. I think maybe once out of hundreds of flights have I got lucky enough that the connecting plane was actually the same plane I came in on. So I assumed the hidden-city ticketing was just people skipping the 2nd connecting flight, not literally exiting the plane at a layover.
wmeredith 15y ago
I think hypocritical is the word you were looking for, rather than "ironic".
michaelochurch 15y ago
What's unethical is the pricing behavior of the airlines, not taking advantage of the hidden-city phenomenon, which exists because certain routes, though longer, are immune to airline price-gouging on account of a fair market.
hugh3 15y ago
This guy was modded down, but are there ethical issues? If I'm booked through from SFO to DFW to MIA and I vanish at DFW, they're going to be calling my name over the PA system and trying to figure out whether or not to hold the DFW-MIA flight. This is especially true if my SFO-DFW leg is delayed -- my vanishing act might well wind up holding up a planeload of people as the airline figures out what the hell has happened to me and whether they should send the flight off to MIA (and then have to book me on a DFW-MIA plane later in the day) or hold it a few more minutes on the assumption that I'm currently dashing across the terminal to try and make it onboard.
- enjo 15y ago
  Ya there are. I've had planes take off fairly delayed because of folks doing just this. We just sit there as the airline tries to reconcile why the number of checked-in passengers doesn't match their passenger count. I'm guessing this is some sort of security rule? It doesn't matter tho, it absolutely sucks for everyone else on the flight.
  - hugh3 15y ago
    I'm guessing this is some sort of security rule? It's a security rule if you have checked bags. If you're gonna blow up a plane they want to make sure you're at least onboard when you do it. Otherwise it's just a convenience thing -- they don't wanna close the doors and then have you show up two minutes later, because then you're a problem they have to deal with. The one time I actually did miss a connection I wound up with a free night in a very nice hotel, but the whole thing soaked up quite a few man-hours of time at the airline's end.
    - jrockway 15y ago
      It's a security rule if you have checked bags. No it's not. People fly on flights other than their bags all the time. If you check in and miss your flight, your bags often get there before you do and might even take a different routing. I missed a Southwest flight from MDW to PDX once. I ended up flying MDW-OAK-PDX, and my bags were in Portland long before I was. There may be a rule for international flights, but I can't find a source on this. (The "you must use the lav in the cabin in which you are ticketed" rule only applies on international flights, for example. It may even only apply on international flights to the US, not from the US. After all, the 9/11 planes were international flights to the US. Oh wait...)
gojomo 15y ago
Perhaps all carriers' in-flight magazines will retaliate next month with front-page "How To Beat The NYT Paywall" articles.
euroclydon 15y ago
I don't think the unattended bag part is a big deal. Who would check a bag to some city they're never going to?
- mbrubeck 15y ago
  Not allowing unintented bags is one step to prevent bombings. The answer to your question ("Who would check a bag to some city they're never going to?") is "someone who is trying to blow up the plane."
- hugh3 15y ago
  Who would check a bag to some city they're never going to? A person who wants to blow up an airliner. That's the point.
  - euroclydon 15y ago
    No, that a point, but not the point here. In this case it's irrelevant, because anyone pulling this maneuver would not check their bag.
sandipc 15y ago
"they need to check if your bags are flying unaccompanied" For those traveling with checked luggage, this "hop off" tactic won't work, unless passengers want to lose their bags. For those without checked luggage, the airlines have no way of determining whether your carry-on bags are still on the plane or not, short of emptying the plane and reboarding (which I have never seen before).
- rflrob 15y ago
  I've only ever had a handful of connections where I'm on the same plane. More often, I have to haul my stuff halfway across the terminal (and the Availability heuristic* tells me that it's almost never the next gate over) to get on a different plane. Thus, if they never scan my boarding pass, they can be pretty sure my luggage isn't on the plane. * Yes, I'm aware this is a cognitive bias. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic
- somebear 15y ago
  The times I've had a multi-leg flight (internationally), it's always been the same plane. The airline still makes everyone get off, bring in new clean blankets and pillows, and ensure that no one left anything behind. Feels a bit annoying when you just go back to the same seat, but I understand why.
  - yardie 15y ago
    Its a safety thing. No one (except crew) can be onboard the aircraft while its refueling.
    - arethuza 15y ago
      I've been on flights between London and Mombasa in Kenya where the aircraft stopped to refuel in Luxor in Egypt and we didn't get off.
donohoe 15y ago
Ironic that the NYT cracks down on people evading its paywall but is selling content on doing the same for air travel. {citation needed} The NYT has done no such thing. They have gone after people for trademark violation. Big diffence :)
guelo 15y ago
I'm trying to comprehend how it is unethical to game a system that is constantly gaming its customers.
- roel_v 15y ago
  The unethical part is in willfully entering into a contract that you know in advance you are not going to uphold. Feel free to not enter the contract - but don't lie to get part of the benefit, and then sneak out of the rest.
jeza 15y ago
Isn't it unethical to create this scenario in the first place? Charging people more to travel a shorter distance than a longer distance on the same route. It just doesn't seem logical in any sense. Perhaps the coverage in NYT will force the airlines to clean up their act.
kulkarnic 15y ago
Not so. The specific tactic the NYC recommends is questionable, but it is possible to surrender your boarding pass for the onward flight. (Say you no longer want to fly: there's nothing they can do to stop you). Note this is also possible if you check luggage: the airline is not obligated to let you get the luggage off the onward flight, but there's no airline that wants to carry baggage for a passenger who's not on the flight anymore (for security reasons). If you're planning such a stunt (with baggage), try to have around 3 hours hop-time; else you WILL be delaying the onward flight with your luggage. Layovers > 4 hours are considered as off-the-airport stopovers (domestically, US). That means the fare you'll get for SFO->DFW->BOS = SFO->DFW + DFW->BOS (made up routing). Exceptions: DEN for UA, ORD for AA, SEA and ORD for AS etc ("transit hubs", that is); where stopovers are free.
stellar678 15y ago
Yet again the word ethics comes up when consumers attempt to act in their own best interest in a given marketplace. Why should it be ethics when it's just economics? The airline isn't chastised for being unethical when they make decisions in their economic interest, why should the consumer be?
- salvadors 15y ago
  Whilst I agree with the principle, I think the argument runs quite simply: When you buy the ticket you agree to a set of accompanying conditions. Doing that knowing you're going to deliberately break some of them is dishonest and immoral.
  - georgemcbay 15y ago
    When you buy the ticket you also expect a seat on the plane, but the airline has absolutely no problem with massively overselling a flight and bumping some people because, hey -- nothing personal, just economics! Why should customers show the airlines any more courtesy than they are shown by the airlines in such matters?
    - mseebach 15y ago
      Because two wrongs doesn't make a right and because the terms you agree to allows the airline to overbook giving you a lower fare in return (at least some business class fares guarantee you a seat).
- roel_v 15y ago
  When you buy the ticket, you agree to the conditions of the deal. When you walk away, you are one-sidedly breaking your agreement. It's quite easy to see that two parties making a voluntary agreement != unethical, while one party breaking that agreement == unethical.
Zak 15y ago
I don't think interfering with someone's business model is inherently unethical. While intentionally booking a flight this way deprives the airline of some opportunities to make money, not boarding the next flight doesn't deprive them of anything. In fact, it saves them a bit on fuel and may even open up a seat on an overbooked flight, saving the airline from paying compensation that usually exceeds the ticket price. What actually seems unethical to me is that airlines have contract terms forbidding getting off early. An honest and effective, though not profitable means of preventing passengers from doing so would be to charge less for one leg than for two.
tibbon 15y ago
Is this any more unethical than ordering a #6 combo at McDonald's and not eating the fries... just because you calculated that for some reason the drink + sandwich cost more than the #6? Even if McDonald's put in big bold letter, "You must eat everything you order or else"? I don't see why you are obliged to use more of the service than you want to. If I buy a train ticket from DC-Boston and hop off in NYC, no one's going to care. Airlines get special treatment? What if I had left a bag on the train? There seems to be some issue with leaving it on a plane and losing it. As long as I'm not a terrorist (which I'm not) and they have screened my bags, I don't see the issue. On the flip side, the airline doesn't really care if they lost your bag and don't know where it is. The bag not being tied to you does not put a bomb in it. Plus, people travel on planes that their bags aren't on all the time and we have no indicator that people doing bad things are more likely to want to be off the plane than on it.
- tptacek 15y ago
  It is the same kind of "unethical" as deliberately buying and throwing away food; it's just a large difference of degree. Incidentally, note that the same airline pricing quirk you'd be exploiting to save ~$100 is also costing other people on the plane; it's not quite a zero sum game, but has some of the same dynamics, as prices rise with occupancy on planes.
  - tibbon 15y ago
    Wouldn't the real solution however be for the airlines to introduce pricing that didn't take an entire company of smart people (ITA) to understand?
    - tptacek 15y ago
      No, because ethically, not liking the way somebody prices a good or service doesn't give you a free pass to abuse other consumers of those goods or services. If you believe obtaining the best possible price for a service by inconveniencing other consumers is ethical, I can save us a protracted and boring argument by stipulating that there is then nothing unethical about hidden-city itineraries. But if you don't think that, then let me warn you that the instinct to fob off responsibility for people's actions to the big faceless corporation is natural and understandable, but also very hazardous to your moral health.

r00fus 15y ago

Unethical? Hardly. It's just against their specific rules (which only exist so they can gouge you on certain fares). Is it ethical for airlines to charge you more for A->B than a flight going from A->B->C?

hugh3 15y ago
Is it ethical for airlines to charge you more for A->B than a flight going from A->B->C? I don't know. Is it obviously unethical for them to do so? It's a sensible observation that a subset of X should be priced lower than X, but is it a moral one? Or, if the airline can make more money by charging more for A->B than A->C via B then, heck, it's their airplane, let 'em do what they want!
- rhizome 15y ago
  Why are ethics and morality being discussed in the context of business? They have their pricing strategy, I have mine. It's my travel money, let me do what I want.
  - ghshephard 15y ago
    Nobody who is commenting here cares (or I strongly suspect they don't care) about the Airlines and people making money. It's the hundred or so people who are sitting on the airplane that are being inconvenienced - possibly missing their own connections later on, that our concerns are for. In general, airlines don't like to have people's checked luggage travel separately from them - and they don't know if the missing person checked luggage or not. So, they either have to do a count, get everyone in their correct seat, or delay the plane until the person gets back on. It's a cute hack, but an annoying one for everyone caught up in it.
    - _delirium 15y ago
      I agree that's one concern, but it's not entirely clear to me what the division of responsibility for those waiting-around passengers is. You might blame the passengers causing the problem, but as a passenger I also expect the airline to anticipate and work around any frequent sources of disruption. If it's something that happens often enough to actually be a problem, then it's an operational problem and they should find some way to mitigate it. For example, they could include it as a factor when evaluating pricing strategies (the likely operations-disrupting effect of certain pricing strategies), or perhaps they could handle check-in and luggage-tracking differently, or they could police their fare rules more stringently to more strongly discourage it. But they should do something, if indeed it is a problem (I'm not sure it actually is). Creating an obvious arbitrage opportunity and then structuring your operations in a way that isn't robust to some proportion of people exploiting it wouldn't be a very responsible way to run a business.
      - ghshephard 15y ago
        In the 15 years I've been flying actively, i've only once been on a plane where I was told to return to my seat so they could do a count. I'm presuming that was a situation where someone hopped off mid travel. So, this is really a rare scenario. I think most people who do this are savvy, which means they realize they are about to screw an entire planeload of people - so it's a fairly rare endeavor. The fact that the NYT was consulting with Trial Lawyers as to the legality of this, is some indication of how sketchy this behavior is. BTW - all of this thread applies to layovers where the plane lands, and some people deplane, while others stay in their seats. None of this applies to the situation where you have to get onto another plane, or, as I've had happen to me a couple times, they require you to exit the plane and then get back on. Particularly if you didn't check luggage. I'm fine with people playing that game - usually only causes a minute or two delay, if that.
        _delirium 15y ago
        Oh, yeah, I didn't even realize the other one happens. I've never had a connection where I didn't have to get off the plane, and usually I have to change planes. I think maybe once out of hundreds of flights have I got lucky enough that the connecting plane was actually the same plane I came in on. So I assumed the hidden-city ticketing was just people skipping the 2nd connecting flight, not literally exiting the plane at a layover.

wmeredith 15y ago

I think hypocritical is the word you were looking for, rather than "ironic".

michaelochurch 15y ago

What's unethical is the pricing behavior of the airlines, not taking advantage of the hidden-city phenomenon, which exists because certain routes, though longer, are immune to airline price-gouging on account of a fair market.

hugh3 15y ago

This guy was modded down, but are there ethical issues? If I'm booked through from SFO to DFW to MIA and I vanish at DFW, they're going to be calling my name over the PA system and trying to figure out whether or not to hold the DFW-MIA flight. This is especially true if my SFO-DFW leg is delayed -- my vanishing act might well wind up holding up a planeload of people as the airline figures out what the hell has happened to me and whether they should send the flight off to MIA (and then have to book me on a DFW-MIA plane later in the day) or hold it a few more minutes on the assumption that I'm currently dashing across the terminal to try and make it onboard.

enjo 15y ago
Ya there are. I've had planes take off fairly delayed because of folks doing just this. We just sit there as the airline tries to reconcile why the number of checked-in passengers doesn't match their passenger count. I'm guessing this is some sort of security rule? It doesn't matter tho, it absolutely sucks for everyone else on the flight.
- hugh3 15y ago
  I'm guessing this is some sort of security rule? It's a security rule if you have checked bags. If you're gonna blow up a plane they want to make sure you're at least onboard when you do it. Otherwise it's just a convenience thing -- they don't wanna close the doors and then have you show up two minutes later, because then you're a problem they have to deal with. The one time I actually did miss a connection I wound up with a free night in a very nice hotel, but the whole thing soaked up quite a few man-hours of time at the airline's end.
  - jrockway 15y ago
    It's a security rule if you have checked bags. No it's not. People fly on flights other than their bags all the time. If you check in and miss your flight, your bags often get there before you do and might even take a different routing. I missed a Southwest flight from MDW to PDX once. I ended up flying MDW-OAK-PDX, and my bags were in Portland long before I was. There may be a rule for international flights, but I can't find a source on this. (The "you must use the lav in the cabin in which you are ticketed" rule only applies on international flights, for example. It may even only apply on international flights to the US, not from the US. After all, the 9/11 planes were international flights to the US. Oh wait...)

gojomo 15y ago

Perhaps all carriers' in-flight magazines will retaliate next month with front-page "How To Beat The NYT Paywall" articles.

euroclydon 15y ago

I don't think the unattended bag part is a big deal. Who would check a bag to some city they're never going to?

mbrubeck 15y ago
Not allowing unintented bags is one step to prevent bombings. The answer to your question ("Who would check a bag to some city they're never going to?") is "someone who is trying to blow up the plane."
hugh3 15y ago
Who would check a bag to some city they're never going to? A person who wants to blow up an airliner. That's the point.
- euroclydon 15y ago
  No, that a point, but not the point here. In this case it's irrelevant, because anyone pulling this maneuver would not check their bag.

sandipc 15y ago

"they need to check if your bags are flying unaccompanied" For those traveling with checked luggage, this "hop off" tactic won't work, unless passengers want to lose their bags. For those without checked luggage, the airlines have no way of determining whether your carry-on bags are still on the plane or not, short of emptying the plane and reboarding (which I have never seen before).

rflrob 15y ago
I've only ever had a handful of connections where I'm on the same plane. More often, I have to haul my stuff halfway across the terminal (and the Availability heuristic* tells me that it's almost never the next gate over) to get on a different plane. Thus, if they never scan my boarding pass, they can be pretty sure my luggage isn't on the plane. * Yes, I'm aware this is a cognitive bias. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic
somebear 15y ago
The times I've had a multi-leg flight (internationally), it's always been the same plane. The airline still makes everyone get off, bring in new clean blankets and pillows, and ensure that no one left anything behind. Feels a bit annoying when you just go back to the same seat, but I understand why.
- yardie 15y ago
  Its a safety thing. No one (except crew) can be onboard the aircraft while its refueling.
  - arethuza 15y ago
    I've been on flights between London and Mombasa in Kenya where the aircraft stopped to refuel in Luxor in Egypt and we didn't get off.

donohoe 15y ago

Ironic that the NYT cracks down on people evading its paywall but is selling content on doing the same for air travel. {citation needed} The NYT has done no such thing. They have gone after people for trademark violation. Big diffence :)

guelo 15y ago

I'm trying to comprehend how it is unethical to game a system that is constantly gaming its customers.

roel_v 15y ago
The unethical part is in willfully entering into a contract that you know in advance you are not going to uphold. Feel free to not enter the contract - but don't lie to get part of the benefit, and then sneak out of the rest.

jeza 15y ago

Isn't it unethical to create this scenario in the first place? Charging people more to travel a shorter distance than a longer distance on the same route. It just doesn't seem logical in any sense. Perhaps the coverage in NYT will force the airlines to clean up their act.

kulkarnic 15y ago

Not so. The specific tactic the NYC recommends is questionable, but it is possible to surrender your boarding pass for the onward flight. (Say you no longer want to fly: there's nothing they can do to stop you). Note this is also possible if you check luggage: the airline is not obligated to let you get the luggage off the onward flight, but there's no airline that wants to carry baggage for a passenger who's not on the flight anymore (for security reasons). If you're planning such a stunt (with baggage), try to have around 3 hours hop-time; else you WILL be delaying the onward flight with your luggage. Layovers > 4 hours are considered as off-the-airport stopovers (domestically, US). That means the fare you'll get for SFO->DFW->BOS = SFO->DFW + DFW->BOS (made up routing). Exceptions: DEN for UA, ORD for AA, SEA and ORD for AS etc ("transit hubs", that is); where stopovers are free.

stellar678 15y ago

Yet again the word ethics comes up when consumers attempt to act in their own best interest in a given marketplace. Why should it be ethics when it's just economics? The airline isn't chastised for being unethical when they make decisions in their economic interest, why should the consumer be?

salvadors 15y ago
Whilst I agree with the principle, I think the argument runs quite simply: When you buy the ticket you agree to a set of accompanying conditions. Doing that knowing you're going to deliberately break some of them is dishonest and immoral.
- georgemcbay 15y ago
  When you buy the ticket you also expect a seat on the plane, but the airline has absolutely no problem with massively overselling a flight and bumping some people because, hey -- nothing personal, just economics! Why should customers show the airlines any more courtesy than they are shown by the airlines in such matters?
  - mseebach 15y ago
    Because two wrongs doesn't make a right and because the terms you agree to allows the airline to overbook giving you a lower fare in return (at least some business class fares guarantee you a seat).
roel_v 15y ago
When you buy the ticket, you agree to the conditions of the deal. When you walk away, you are one-sidedly breaking your agreement. It's quite easy to see that two parties making a voluntary agreement != unethical, while one party breaking that agreement == unethical.

Zak 15y ago

I don't think interfering with someone's business model is inherently unethical. While intentionally booking a flight this way deprives the airline of some opportunities to make money, not boarding the next flight doesn't deprive them of anything. In fact, it saves them a bit on fuel and may even open up a seat on an overbooked flight, saving the airline from paying compensation that usually exceeds the ticket price. What actually seems unethical to me is that airlines have contract terms forbidding getting off early. An honest and effective, though not profitable means of preventing passengers from doing so would be to charge less for one leg than for two.

tibbon 15y ago

Is this any more unethical than ordering a #6 combo at McDonald's and not eating the fries... just because you calculated that for some reason the drink + sandwich cost more than the #6? Even if McDonald's put in big bold letter, "You must eat everything you order or else"? I don't see why you are obliged to use more of the service than you want to. If I buy a train ticket from DC-Boston and hop off in NYC, no one's going to care. Airlines get special treatment? What if I had left a bag on the train? There seems to be some issue with leaving it on a plane and losing it. As long as I'm not a terrorist (which I'm not) and they have screened my bags, I don't see the issue. On the flip side, the airline doesn't really care if they lost your bag and don't know where it is. The bag not being tied to you does not put a bomb in it. Plus, people travel on planes that their bags aren't on all the time and we have no indicator that people doing bad things are more likely to want to be off the plane than on it.

tptacek 15y ago
It is the same kind of "unethical" as deliberately buying and throwing away food; it's just a large difference of degree. Incidentally, note that the same airline pricing quirk you'd be exploiting to save ~$100 is also costing other people on the plane; it's not quite a zero sum game, but has some of the same dynamics, as prices rise with occupancy on planes.
- tibbon 15y ago
  Wouldn't the real solution however be for the airlines to introduce pricing that didn't take an entire company of smart people (ITA) to understand?
  - tptacek 15y ago
    No, because ethically, not liking the way somebody prices a good or service doesn't give you a free pass to abuse other consumers of those goods or services. If you believe obtaining the best possible price for a service by inconveniencing other consumers is ethical, I can save us a protracted and boring argument by stipulating that there is then nothing unethical about hidden-city itineraries. But if you don't think that, then let me warn you that the instinct to fob off responsibility for people's actions to the big faceless corporation is natural and understandable, but also very hazardous to your moral health.