10 ms·

I've often hacked Kayak by booking flights to other destinations with a stopover at the place I want to go. It's bizarre, but yes, they're sometimes cheaper.

I've often hacked Kayak by booking flights to other destinations with a stopover at the place I want to go. It's bizarre, but yes, they're sometimes cheaper. "opaque and manipulative" indeed.

rll 13y ago
That only works for one-ways or on the return portion. Once you miss a segment the rest of your ticket is canceled at that point, so be careful.
saryant 13y ago
This is called hidden-city ticketing, it's not new. Most airlines forbid it in their contract of carriage. There's also no guarantee that you'll keep your stopover city—you could get rerouted through another hub and would have no recourse.
veemjeem 13y ago
I wonder if they're doing price elasticity experiments? You could get a slightly cheaper price by getting a different cookie set.
cynwoody 13y ago
Kayak has a feature they call Hacker Fares™†. †http://www.kayak.com/news/a-new-way-to-find-deals-on-flights-hacker-fares.bd.html http://www.kayak.com/news/a-new-way-to-find-deals-on-flights...
- smackfu 13y ago
  Those are nothing special, they are just buying two one-way tickets on different airlines because they are cheaper in a particular scenario. Airlines don't care if you do that.
wwweston 13y ago
I have a similarly bizarre little story that's sort of the opposite: I recently added a leg to a trip and cut my fare. Just before the holidays, I was trying to get a flight from LAX to SLC. I tend to fly Southwest, but was finding the fares higher than usual -- generally I can get something in the $250-$300 range, I was seeing $350ish. I was offered a ride to Sacramento, so I checked SAC -> SLC and found I could purchase that flight for $200. I booked it. There are no direct flights from SAC -> SLC on Southwest, though. Mine, as it turned out, stopped over in... LAX.
- ubernostrum 13y ago
  This is actually not "bizarre". It's not even unusual. And it has a perfectly rational explanation. Suppose there are three cities: City A, City B and City C. And for simplicity's sake, suppose that City B is the hub for the airline. Let's say B and C are major business destinations with a lot of business traffic between them. Business travelers are less price-sensitive since they're not personally paying the fare (they just have to stay within corporate travel rules), and more concerned with things like flight length and schedule. But City A, on the other hand, isn't really a major business destination. People who want to go from City A to other cities are likely on personal/tourist travel, and those passengers do one and only one thing: punch the origin and destination cities into a travel-search engine, and pick the cheapest ticket. All other considerations are null. Now, suppose that you are the airline employee in charge of maximizing revenue. Getting money out of the B -> C route is easy -- you just need to know a bit about corporate travel policies. If most companies auto-approve any ticket under $500, for example, you could set the fare at $499 and, so long as the flight is short and at a good time of day, you'll get business travelers paying it. But what about pricing for trips out of City A? They need to connect at your hub in City B, but again you have to remember that price is the only consideration that matters to those passengers. So you set the fares out of City A as low as you can manage while still being profitable (and it may even turn out that B -> C has to subsidize the routes out of A a bit). The result is, often, that A -> B -> C is cheaper than B -> C. Similarly, for some city pairs, A -> B -> C will be cheaper than A -> B, which creates an incentive to buy the A -> B -> C ticket, not check a bag, and then just walk out of the airport in City B. This is "hidden city" ticketing (because it's "hiding" the fact that your real destination is the connection point), and airlines will usually penalize (through revocation of frequent-flyer accounts, etc.) passengers who do this.

I've often hacked Kayak by booking flights to other destinations with a stopover at the place I want to go. It's bizarre, but yes, they're sometimes cheaper. "opaque and manipulative" indeed.

rll 13y ago

That only works for one-ways or on the return portion. Once you miss a segment the rest of your ticket is canceled at that point, so be careful.

saryant 13y ago

This is called hidden-city ticketing, it's not new. Most airlines forbid it in their contract of carriage. There's also no guarantee that you'll keep your stopover city—you could get rerouted through another hub and would have no recourse.

veemjeem 13y ago

I wonder if they're doing price elasticity experiments? You could get a slightly cheaper price by getting a different cookie set.

cynwoody 13y ago

Kayak has a feature they call Hacker Fares™†. †http://www.kayak.com/news/a-new-way-to-find-deals-on-flights-hacker-fares.bd.html http://www.kayak.com/news/a-new-way-to-find-deals-on-flights...

smackfu 13y ago
Those are nothing special, they are just buying two one-way tickets on different airlines because they are cheaper in a particular scenario. Airlines don't care if you do that.

wwweston 13y ago

I have a similarly bizarre little story that's sort of the opposite: I recently added a leg to a trip and cut my fare. Just before the holidays, I was trying to get a flight from LAX to SLC. I tend to fly Southwest, but was finding the fares higher than usual -- generally I can get something in the $250-$300 range, I was seeing $350ish. I was offered a ride to Sacramento, so I checked SAC -> SLC and found I could purchase that flight for $200. I booked it. There are no direct flights from SAC -> SLC on Southwest, though. Mine, as it turned out, stopped over in... LAX.

ubernostrum 13y ago
This is actually not "bizarre". It's not even unusual. And it has a perfectly rational explanation. Suppose there are three cities: City A, City B and City C. And for simplicity's sake, suppose that City B is the hub for the airline. Let's say B and C are major business destinations with a lot of business traffic between them. Business travelers are less price-sensitive since they're not personally paying the fare (they just have to stay within corporate travel rules), and more concerned with things like flight length and schedule. But City A, on the other hand, isn't really a major business destination. People who want to go from City A to other cities are likely on personal/tourist travel, and those passengers do one and only one thing: punch the origin and destination cities into a travel-search engine, and pick the cheapest ticket. All other considerations are null. Now, suppose that you are the airline employee in charge of maximizing revenue. Getting money out of the B -> C route is easy -- you just need to know a bit about corporate travel policies. If most companies auto-approve any ticket under $500, for example, you could set the fare at $499 and, so long as the flight is short and at a good time of day, you'll get business travelers paying it. But what about pricing for trips out of City A? They need to connect at your hub in City B, but again you have to remember that price is the only consideration that matters to those passengers. So you set the fares out of City A as low as you can manage while still being profitable (and it may even turn out that B -> C has to subsidize the routes out of A a bit). The result is, often, that A -> B -> C is cheaper than B -> C. Similarly, for some city pairs, A -> B -> C will be cheaper than A -> B, which creates an incentive to buy the A -> B -> C ticket, not check a bag, and then just walk out of the airport in City B. This is "hidden city" ticketing (because it's "hiding" the fact that your real destination is the connection point), and airlines will usually penalize (through revocation of frequent-flyer accounts, etc.) passengers who do this.