10 ms·

Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz

116 points by elijahparker 12y ago

justinsb 12y ago
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). I actually thought that airlines have always threatened to 'claw back' the fare difference from travelers that did this, but I may be mistaken.
- saryant 12y ago
  The airlines will go after passengers who abuse hidden-city ticketing but will generally let it slide if you only do it once or twice. There are stories on FlyerTalk about repeat offenders being banned from certain airlines. It's probably the most frequently asked question on that site.
- rhizome 12y ago
  That would be like a casino clawing back estimated losses from a card counter. While the airlines and Orbitz use the word, "prohibited," like card counting it is not actually illegal and only contravenes their ticketing policies.
  - justinsb 12y ago
    According to saryant's comment, sounds like you get banned from the airline, just like (winning) card counters get banned from casinos.
- Dylan16807 12y ago
  Not every business needs to be big. If they make a profit on a flaw in the system and eventually leave the world a better place as they gracefully shut down operations, win-win.
  - cubano 12y ago
    If only businesses worked with this sort of mindset...we wouldn't be having near the wealth disparity and stagnant wage issues that are plaguing the world these days. But, they absolutely do not think in these terms...it's "exploit every dollar possible and pay us at the top and our shareholders every penny we scrape, to hell with anyone not like us."
- adventured 12y ago
  You're presuming that skiplagged wouldn't then branch into other ticketing angles using all the publicity / usage it acquires prior to losing the original product. TravelZoo is worth $192 million, and has $158 million in sales. Why couldn't Skiplagged enter that turf with its momentum? (in this hypothetical)
- meritt 12y ago
  SkipLagged doesn't make any revenue, it was just a project to help consumers.
- wirelessest 12y ago
  Many companies trying to enter a market with a big markup (like travel) will do things like this. Find a differentiator, build a user base, and in the end become another comparison booking site that just passes people off to an agency for a big cut. If you look back in the history of the big and small comparison sites, most started with (if the don't still operate) a gimmick but really are making their margins by being a step in the user's path to buying an airline ticket-- or better, a hotel reservation.
thescribe 12y ago
After reading the article, I'm kind of confused. What is the public-safety concern with this behavior?
- rhizome 12y ago
  It's a dog-whistle that they'd like it to be a TSA crime.
- hayksaakian 12y ago
  none, it's all BS. the only real point they have is that if many people buy A-B-C tickets, their calculations will expect many physical people to be on the B-C flight. Here is a contrived situation that they might present: Aircraft are fueled to certain amounts based on the number of passengers they have. If an airplane takes off from SEA to LAX, it does not want to stop right away and land, minutes after taking off. The landing might be too "hard" since the plane weighs too much. Normally what happens is the plane will either take off with less fuel, or it has to circle around in the air, burning off excess fuel before landing. If you have an airplane flying from SEA to LAX to DFW, and too many people get out at LAX, and don't make the LAX-DFW flight, then the weight calculations on takeoff and landing at LAX and DFW will be very different. Now keep in mind in the real world, this probably won't make any difference, since more than 2% of travelers don't do this. Also i have not looked up what kind of weight impact the actual passengers are supposed to have relative to the actual airplane.
  - bdonlan 12y ago
    Passenger (and luggage) weight makes a huge difference for fuel burn and overall weight. That said, planes that are above maximum landing weight are generally bound for a very distant destination - on an SEA - LAX leg the plane is almost certainly nowhere near full on fuel, it under the maximum landing weight from the start, and can land immediately without a problem. If it is going for somewhere far away, however, that gives the crew plenty of time to burn extra fuel on the way by operating inefficiently (turning on the APU, flying at inefficient altitudes or airspeeds, etc), and in any case if enough passengers are missing that the fuel burn will change significantly that'd probably push it back down under the landing weight limit. The whole circling to burn fuel or fuel dumping thing usually happens when the plane has to make an emergency or unexpected landing; here the typical scenario is that the plane is fully loaded with passengers and luggage, and has nearly-full fuel tanks for a long cross-country or international route. Shortly after takeoff, a technical issue is identified, and the plane needs to shed weight before landing to avoid damaging the landing gear and requiring a costly inspection before returning to service. The other scenario where circling to burn fuel can happen is if there's a wet runway or other such issue that reduces braking performance. Again, though, this is mostly an issue if you have a fully loaded plane ready for a very long route.
hayksaakian 12y ago
This sounds absurd. This is the best analogy i've come up with: A Sandwich shop sells half sandwiches at 5$ and full sandwiches at 6$ 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. 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. ---------- I think if they don't want people to buy a product, then they shouldn't sell it. Either lower the price of A -> B tickets, or make sure that tickets from A -> B -> C cost no less than A -> B 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.
- justinsb 12y ago
  The problem with the analogy (as I see it) is that A->B->C may be 'worse than' than A->B (because place C may be undesirable), whereas that isn't true for halves of a sandwich (because it is ok to not eat the second half of a sandwich). Oh, and the airlines sell you the full sandwich for $3, but the half sandwich for $5. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but it's the airlines right to set their prices and try to defend them; they may succeed or they may not. I doubt this particular lawsuit will be the test case that breaks them.
  - Dylan16807 12y ago
    Oh it's certainly their right to set the prices, but I wouldn't automatically say it's their right to dictate which tickets you use post-purchase.
    - jamesaguilar 12y ago
      I wonder. Do you sign any agreement that prohibits hidden city routing when you buy the ticket? If so, on an ethical level, it's not the same as the sandwich buying scenario, where you are not signing any additional agreement. I wonder what I would do if I were the airline. Obviously the simplest thing would be to suspend the return ticket, but I suppose that the return ticket would typically be booked on a different airline. Another option would be to collaborate with other airlines to suspend return tickets, but I suppose that would be collusion and wouldn't fly with regulators. You could also try a prisoner's dilemma-y thing where future sales to a customer that has hidden city-routed in the past are marked up to fix the difference. If all airlines did this then only infrequent flyers would be able to hidden-city route. But if any airline refuses to participate, it might be tough for the business of the airlines that engaged in this practice. Tough situation for the airlines. Not that I have too much sympathy, but I do take it into perspective that travelling is historically extremely cheap. It's a great time to be a flyer.
lnanek2 12y ago
SouthWest has never complained when I've asked to deplane early. They just seem to mark it down on a clip board and then are fine with it.
bribri 12y ago
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. Zaman said Skiplagged is just a "side project."
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rtpg 12y ago
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
- butwhy 12y ago
  You mean besides the fact that they will make less money off fares that people wouldn't have found if it was not for this site?
  - benguild 12y ago
    It seems like they use the higher fares to the middle destination to compensate for the higher costs per person of the less popular leg. It's all a complicated algorithm but they have to provide reasonably reliable flights to all of the destinations that they serve in case someone gets bumped. (or they'll have to pay out huge fines to each passenger.)
    - apendleton 12y ago
      I think this relies on the arguably-faulty assumption that ticket prices are based on airlines' costs in delivering the service. Airlines' costs probably set the floor for ticket prices most (but not all) of the time, but don't have much to do with the typical prices. This obvious when you look at the cost of holiday travel: planes don't become twice as expensive to fly because it's Christmas. What actual determines ticket price is mainly the supply and demand around trips between a pair of destinations (like with any other market). Lots of people want to move between DC and New York, and lots of them are business people who can afford to pay a lot, so the market can support a high price for this city pair. This isn't true of, say, DC and Yonkers. What's key, also, is that the layover cities (setting aside people doing the "hidden city" thing) are largely an implementation detail; if you're going from DC to Yonkers, you're comparing the flights that go through New York to flights that go through Philly directly on price (assuming about equal convenience), and you're going to pick the cheapest one. This means market forces are going to drive these prices to be similar, even if the DC->Philly market is radically different from the DC->NYC market. The consequence is weird, unintuitive situations where a flight to the intermediate city can be more expensive than one to the final destination, if market forces are such that the market can typically support a higher price for flights to that intermediate city than they can to the ultimate destination city. Hidden city travelers take advantage of the cost disparity between the markets -- it's a sort of arbitrage.
rtpg 12y ago
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
sgdesign 12y ago
You can't wish for better advertising that this… "our deals are so great that airlines are trying to sue us out of existence!".
- canjobear 12y ago
  Indeed. I had never heard of this site but now, thanks to the lawsuit, I will definitely check it out when I am booking my next flight.
  - saryant 12y ago
    Our deals are so great the airlines will ban you as a customer if you use them? Sounds wonderful.
Avitas 12y ago
This type of purely nuisance punitive lawsuit should wind up biting both Orbitz and the airlines in the ass. 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. Unless I'm missing something, as long as he can weather the delays, this appears to be a slam dunk.
dclowd9901 12y ago
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.
- dsl 12y ago
  It only finds lower fares on some routes, not all of them.
agotterer 12y ago
Where does skiplaggedget their data from? If they are scraping, theres some merit for a lawsuit.
- chrismcb 12y ago
  I would assume from one of the handful of companies that provide this data. Requests aren't cheap, and he probably needs to make multiple request to figure it out. Ita is one such company, purchased by google a few years ago. I doubt he is scrapping, as it seems orbitz's issue is he provides a link to them
- rgovind 12y ago
  google bought ITA a few years ago. You can login to their free service and do the analysis yourself, even if skiplagging is closed.
ixwt 12y ago
The owner of Skiplagged actually did an AMA almost a month ago: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2o831k/i_run_skiplagged_a_site_being_sued_by_united/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2o831k/i_run_skiplagge...
ixwt 12y ago
The owner of Skiplagged did an AMA on reddit a month ago: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2o831k/i_run_skiplagged_a_site_being_sued_by_united/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2o831k/i_run_skiplagge...
- pimlottc 12y ago
  Interesting. Isn't it usually considered a bad idea to be making lots of public statements like this during a pending lawsuit?
  - dsl 12y ago
    Lawyers usually don't give you advance warning that they are going to sue you.
    - pimlottc 12y ago
      The lawsuit was reported in mid-November [0]. The AMA refers to it in the opening post. > Unfortunately, Skiplagged is now facing a lawsuit for making it too easy for consumers to save money. Ask me almost anything! 0: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-18/united-orbitz-sue-travel-site-over-hidden-city-ticketing-1-.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-18/united-orbitz-sue-t...
hayksaakian 12y ago
to put this in laymans terms: imagine you want to go from city A to city B normally you would search for tickets from A-B however, during your search, you would NOT see tickets that go from A-B-C. 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). the website in question made it easier to find these types of tickets. These tickets are commonly known as "hidden-city" tickets. the airlines would prefer you to spend more money on an A-B flight rather than buying the cheaper A-B-C ticket. they are now suing this website to enforce their preference on consumer choice. 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) This website is simply _enabling_ people who intend to violate this (potential) term of their airline ticket agreement.
- eurleif 12y ago
  >it would be limited to your individual contractual obligations as the owner of an airline ticke Interfering with a contractual relationship is a tort. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference
- A1kmm 12y ago
  > This website is simply _enabling_ people who intend to > violate this (potential) term of their airline ticket > agreement. Which might, in some jurisdictions, open the website operators to claims of tortious interference (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference) if they can prove that the site operator knew about the contractual term and incited people to breach it. Hopefully a term requiring someone to take a flight is unenforceable (if such a term even exists) - so that might give them a defence even if such a term exists.
  - quesera 12y ago
    > if they can prove that the site operator knew about the contractual term and incited people to breach it. Notably, the contract didn't yet exist at the time of involvement of the site operator. At the point of ticket purchase / contractual agreement, the site operator is not involved, and in fact the operator has no knowledge of whether a contract was entered at all.
bentcorner 12y ago
The definition of "hidden city ticketing" appears to be "book A -> B -> C, get off at B". Out of curiosity, is it all possible to book A -> B -> C, and travel the B -> C leg? Would the airline sell your seat if you didn't show up at A?
- stephenhuey 12y ago
  They would typically cancel your ticket if you didn't show up at A.
- rsanheim 12y ago
  That is definitely not possible, your whole ticket will get cancelled as the airline assumes a no-show.
Pyxl101 12y ago
> “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.” What in the world? How is that comparison anywhere near remotely justifiable? Absolutely ridiculous. > 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. Yes, please do. Price each ticket based on what it costs and a fair margin, not based on competitive meta-market games. 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 less ethical than customers taking advantage of hidden city routes for a lower price.
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
  Probably the same way folks try to justify selling a DVD that only plays on North American DVD players. Generally people substitute the phrase "it isn't fair when ..." when they meant to say "I don't like it when ..." I expect that the airlines will be unsuccessful in their suit but will get the FAA to approve a fee that would be charged if a passenger did not make the complete flight. In the back rooms they will tell the FAA its for passenger safety, after all its important in an emergency to know who is really on the plane, and people who get off early are putting first responders in harms way as they will go looking for people who aren't actually on the plane. They will argue they need a way to discourage that behavior and one way to do that is to charge a hefty "early exit" fee should a passenger depart the route mid-route. They would of course be open to discussions if it was for a legitimate emergency like you had to get back home or something. And then there will be a $250 "early exit" fee and this web site will be toast and the airlines will be happy again.
  - razzberryman 12y ago
joshmn 12y ago
I'm curious what the backend of this (and sites like Hipmunk) uses.
djloche 12y ago
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.
razzberryman 12y ago
I hadn't heard of this site until the airlines tried to shut it down. Nice job airlines! Hopefully Zaman can hang in there.
bohnej 12y ago
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.
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astanway 12y ago
His legal fund is here: http://www.gofundme.com/skiplagged http://www.gofundme.com/skiplagged I encourage everyone to donate.
kartikkumar 12y ago
What I don't understand is this statement: > "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." 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. 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.
- chrismcb 12y ago
  Typically if you miss a leg, any leg, they will then cancel the rest of your itinerary. They won't give you a refund, but it still falls under the normal missed flight rules. To me this is more fraud on their part than you not flying a portion if the itinerary
  - kartikkumar 12y ago
    Yea exactly, seems like they want to have their cake and it eat. I presume that they are aware of the fact that a heavy-handed approach towards dealing with hidden-city tickets is the worst way to deter it, but I suspect that it's what investors want to see [1] [1]
brianbreslin 12y ago
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?)
- andrewrice 12y ago
  Not sure about the tool specifically, but I know that tickets to Charlotte/Atlanta from MIA/FLL are often more expensive than tickets to New York from MIA/FLL, routes which almost always have a layover in Atlanta or Charlotte. (I'm also from Miami)
- xasos 12y ago
  Same. Can't seem to find many flights from a major hub city (ORD). I've just been flipping in new airport codes into the custom URL[1], but haven't gotten anything yet. [1] https://skiplagged.com/?src=ORD&dst=JFK&when=2015-01-31&whenBack=2015-02-01&sort=cost https://skiplagged.com/?src=ORD&dst=JFK&when=2015-01-31&when...
- ElComradio 12y ago
  ERI -> PHL -> NYC is half price of ERI -> PHL last time I looked. Maybe the tool works best from smaller airports.
joliv 12y ago
Not sure how I feel about them asking for donations to their legal fund. They're a private business, not a charity.
TeMPOraL 12y ago
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. 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. 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.
dogma1138 12y ago
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. 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. 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$...

116 points by elijahparker 12y ago

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). I actually thought that airlines have always threatened to 'claw back' the fare difference from travelers that did this, but I may be mistaken.

saryant 12y ago
The airlines will go after passengers who abuse hidden-city ticketing but will generally let it slide if you only do it once or twice. There are stories on FlyerTalk about repeat offenders being banned from certain airlines. It's probably the most frequently asked question on that site.
rhizome 12y ago
That would be like a casino clawing back estimated losses from a card counter. While the airlines and Orbitz use the word, "prohibited," like card counting it is not actually illegal and only contravenes their ticketing policies.
- justinsb 12y ago
  According to saryant's comment, sounds like you get banned from the airline, just like (winning) card counters get banned from casinos.
Dylan16807 12y ago
Not every business needs to be big. If they make a profit on a flaw in the system and eventually leave the world a better place as they gracefully shut down operations, win-win.
- cubano 12y ago
  If only businesses worked with this sort of mindset...we wouldn't be having near the wealth disparity and stagnant wage issues that are plaguing the world these days. But, they absolutely do not think in these terms...it's "exploit every dollar possible and pay us at the top and our shareholders every penny we scrape, to hell with anyone not like us."
adventured 12y ago
You're presuming that skiplagged wouldn't then branch into other ticketing angles using all the publicity / usage it acquires prior to losing the original product. TravelZoo is worth $192 million, and has $158 million in sales. Why couldn't Skiplagged enter that turf with its momentum? (in this hypothetical)
meritt 12y ago
SkipLagged doesn't make any revenue, it was just a project to help consumers.
wirelessest 12y ago
Many companies trying to enter a market with a big markup (like travel) will do things like this. Find a differentiator, build a user base, and in the end become another comparison booking site that just passes people off to an agency for a big cut. If you look back in the history of the big and small comparison sites, most started with (if the don't still operate) a gimmick but really are making their margins by being a step in the user's path to buying an airline ticket-- or better, a hotel reservation.

thescribe 12y ago

After reading the article, I'm kind of confused. What is the public-safety concern with this behavior?

rhizome 12y ago
It's a dog-whistle that they'd like it to be a TSA crime.
hayksaakian 12y ago
none, it's all BS. the only real point they have is that if many people buy A-B-C tickets, their calculations will expect many physical people to be on the B-C flight. Here is a contrived situation that they might present: Aircraft are fueled to certain amounts based on the number of passengers they have. If an airplane takes off from SEA to LAX, it does not want to stop right away and land, minutes after taking off. The landing might be too "hard" since the plane weighs too much. Normally what happens is the plane will either take off with less fuel, or it has to circle around in the air, burning off excess fuel before landing. If you have an airplane flying from SEA to LAX to DFW, and too many people get out at LAX, and don't make the LAX-DFW flight, then the weight calculations on takeoff and landing at LAX and DFW will be very different. Now keep in mind in the real world, this probably won't make any difference, since more than 2% of travelers don't do this. Also i have not looked up what kind of weight impact the actual passengers are supposed to have relative to the actual airplane.
- bdonlan 12y ago
  Passenger (and luggage) weight makes a huge difference for fuel burn and overall weight. That said, planes that are above maximum landing weight are generally bound for a very distant destination - on an SEA - LAX leg the plane is almost certainly nowhere near full on fuel, it under the maximum landing weight from the start, and can land immediately without a problem. If it is going for somewhere far away, however, that gives the crew plenty of time to burn extra fuel on the way by operating inefficiently (turning on the APU, flying at inefficient altitudes or airspeeds, etc), and in any case if enough passengers are missing that the fuel burn will change significantly that'd probably push it back down under the landing weight limit. The whole circling to burn fuel or fuel dumping thing usually happens when the plane has to make an emergency or unexpected landing; here the typical scenario is that the plane is fully loaded with passengers and luggage, and has nearly-full fuel tanks for a long cross-country or international route. Shortly after takeoff, a technical issue is identified, and the plane needs to shed weight before landing to avoid damaging the landing gear and requiring a costly inspection before returning to service. The other scenario where circling to burn fuel can happen is if there's a wet runway or other such issue that reduces braking performance. Again, though, this is mostly an issue if you have a fully loaded plane ready for a very long route.

hayksaakian 12y ago

This sounds absurd. This is the best analogy i've come up with: A Sandwich shop sells half sandwiches at 5$ and full sandwiches at 6$ 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. 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. ---------- I think if they don't want people to buy a product, then they shouldn't sell it. Either lower the price of A -> B tickets, or make sure that tickets from A -> B -> C cost no less than A -> B 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.

justinsb 12y ago
The problem with the analogy (as I see it) is that A->B->C may be 'worse than' than A->B (because place C may be undesirable), whereas that isn't true for halves of a sandwich (because it is ok to not eat the second half of a sandwich). Oh, and the airlines sell you the full sandwich for $3, but the half sandwich for $5. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but it's the airlines right to set their prices and try to defend them; they may succeed or they may not. I doubt this particular lawsuit will be the test case that breaks them.
- Dylan16807 12y ago
  Oh it's certainly their right to set the prices, but I wouldn't automatically say it's their right to dictate which tickets you use post-purchase.
  - jamesaguilar 12y ago
    I wonder. Do you sign any agreement that prohibits hidden city routing when you buy the ticket? If so, on an ethical level, it's not the same as the sandwich buying scenario, where you are not signing any additional agreement. I wonder what I would do if I were the airline. Obviously the simplest thing would be to suspend the return ticket, but I suppose that the return ticket would typically be booked on a different airline. Another option would be to collaborate with other airlines to suspend return tickets, but I suppose that would be collusion and wouldn't fly with regulators. You could also try a prisoner's dilemma-y thing where future sales to a customer that has hidden city-routed in the past are marked up to fix the difference. If all airlines did this then only infrequent flyers would be able to hidden-city route. But if any airline refuses to participate, it might be tough for the business of the airlines that engaged in this practice. Tough situation for the airlines. Not that I have too much sympathy, but I do take it into perspective that travelling is historically extremely cheap. It's a great time to be a flyer.

lnanek2 12y ago

SouthWest has never complained when I've asked to deplane early. They just seem to mark it down on a clip board and then are fine with it.

bribri 12y ago

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. Zaman said Skiplagged is just a "side project."

deleted 12y ago

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rtpg 12y ago

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

butwhy 12y ago
You mean besides the fact that they will make less money off fares that people wouldn't have found if it was not for this site?
- benguild 12y ago
  It seems like they use the higher fares to the middle destination to compensate for the higher costs per person of the less popular leg. It's all a complicated algorithm but they have to provide reasonably reliable flights to all of the destinations that they serve in case someone gets bumped. (or they'll have to pay out huge fines to each passenger.)
  - apendleton 12y ago
    I think this relies on the arguably-faulty assumption that ticket prices are based on airlines' costs in delivering the service. Airlines' costs probably set the floor for ticket prices most (but not all) of the time, but don't have much to do with the typical prices. This obvious when you look at the cost of holiday travel: planes don't become twice as expensive to fly because it's Christmas. What actual determines ticket price is mainly the supply and demand around trips between a pair of destinations (like with any other market). Lots of people want to move between DC and New York, and lots of them are business people who can afford to pay a lot, so the market can support a high price for this city pair. This isn't true of, say, DC and Yonkers. What's key, also, is that the layover cities (setting aside people doing the "hidden city" thing) are largely an implementation detail; if you're going from DC to Yonkers, you're comparing the flights that go through New York to flights that go through Philly directly on price (assuming about equal convenience), and you're going to pick the cheapest one. This means market forces are going to drive these prices to be similar, even if the DC->Philly market is radically different from the DC->NYC market. The consequence is weird, unintuitive situations where a flight to the intermediate city can be more expensive than one to the final destination, if market forces are such that the market can typically support a higher price for flights to that intermediate city than they can to the ultimate destination city. Hidden city travelers take advantage of the cost disparity between the markets -- it's a sort of arbitrage.

rtpg 12y ago

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

sgdesign 12y ago

You can't wish for better advertising that this… "our deals are so great that airlines are trying to sue us out of existence!".

canjobear 12y ago
Indeed. I had never heard of this site but now, thanks to the lawsuit, I will definitely check it out when I am booking my next flight.
- saryant 12y ago
  Our deals are so great the airlines will ban you as a customer if you use them? Sounds wonderful.

Avitas 12y ago

This type of purely nuisance punitive lawsuit should wind up biting both Orbitz and the airlines in the ass. 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. Unless I'm missing something, as long as he can weather the delays, this appears to be a slam dunk.

dclowd9901 12y ago

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.

dsl 12y ago
It only finds lower fares on some routes, not all of them.

agotterer 12y ago

Where does skiplaggedget their data from? If they are scraping, theres some merit for a lawsuit.

chrismcb 12y ago
I would assume from one of the handful of companies that provide this data. Requests aren't cheap, and he probably needs to make multiple request to figure it out. Ita is one such company, purchased by google a few years ago. I doubt he is scrapping, as it seems orbitz's issue is he provides a link to them
rgovind 12y ago
google bought ITA a few years ago. You can login to their free service and do the analysis yourself, even if skiplagging is closed.

ixwt 12y ago

The owner of Skiplagged actually did an AMA almost a month ago: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2o831k/i_run_skiplagged_a_site_being_sued_by_united/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2o831k/i_run_skiplagge...

ixwt 12y ago

The owner of Skiplagged did an AMA on reddit a month ago: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2o831k/i_run_skiplagged_a_site_being_sued_by_united/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2o831k/i_run_skiplagge...

pimlottc 12y ago
Interesting. Isn't it usually considered a bad idea to be making lots of public statements like this during a pending lawsuit?
- dsl 12y ago
  Lawyers usually don't give you advance warning that they are going to sue you.
  - pimlottc 12y ago
    The lawsuit was reported in mid-November [0]. The AMA refers to it in the opening post. > Unfortunately, Skiplagged is now facing a lawsuit for making it too easy for consumers to save money. Ask me almost anything! 0: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-18/united-orbitz-sue-travel-site-over-hidden-city-ticketing-1-.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-18/united-orbitz-sue-t...

hayksaakian 12y ago

to put this in laymans terms: imagine you want to go from city A to city B normally you would search for tickets from A-B however, during your search, you would NOT see tickets that go from A-B-C. 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). the website in question made it easier to find these types of tickets. These tickets are commonly known as "hidden-city" tickets. the airlines would prefer you to spend more money on an A-B flight rather than buying the cheaper A-B-C ticket. they are now suing this website to enforce their preference on consumer choice. 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) This website is simply _enabling_ people who intend to violate this (potential) term of their airline ticket agreement.

eurleif 12y ago
>it would be limited to your individual contractual obligations as the owner of an airline ticke Interfering with a contractual relationship is a tort. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference
A1kmm 12y ago
> This website is simply _enabling_ people who intend to > violate this (potential) term of their airline ticket > agreement. Which might, in some jurisdictions, open the website operators to claims of tortious interference (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference) if they can prove that the site operator knew about the contractual term and incited people to breach it. Hopefully a term requiring someone to take a flight is unenforceable (if such a term even exists) - so that might give them a defence even if such a term exists.
- quesera 12y ago
  > if they can prove that the site operator knew about the contractual term and incited people to breach it. Notably, the contract didn't yet exist at the time of involvement of the site operator. At the point of ticket purchase / contractual agreement, the site operator is not involved, and in fact the operator has no knowledge of whether a contract was entered at all.

bentcorner 12y ago

The definition of "hidden city ticketing" appears to be "book A -> B -> C, get off at B". Out of curiosity, is it all possible to book A -> B -> C, and travel the B -> C leg? Would the airline sell your seat if you didn't show up at A?

stephenhuey 12y ago
They would typically cancel your ticket if you didn't show up at A.
rsanheim 12y ago
That is definitely not possible, your whole ticket will get cancelled as the airline assumes a no-show.

Pyxl101 12y ago

> “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.” What in the world? How is that comparison anywhere near remotely justifiable? Absolutely ridiculous. > 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. Yes, please do. Price each ticket based on what it costs and a fair margin, not based on competitive meta-market games. 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 less ethical than customers taking advantage of hidden city routes for a lower price.

ChuckMcM 12y ago
Probably the same way folks try to justify selling a DVD that only plays on North American DVD players. Generally people substitute the phrase "it isn't fair when ..." when they meant to say "I don't like it when ..." I expect that the airlines will be unsuccessful in their suit but will get the FAA to approve a fee that would be charged if a passenger did not make the complete flight. In the back rooms they will tell the FAA its for passenger safety, after all its important in an emergency to know who is really on the plane, and people who get off early are putting first responders in harms way as they will go looking for people who aren't actually on the plane. They will argue they need a way to discourage that behavior and one way to do that is to charge a hefty "early exit" fee should a passenger depart the route mid-route. They would of course be open to discussions if it was for a legitimate emergency like you had to get back home or something. And then there will be a $250 "early exit" fee and this web site will be toast and the airlines will be happy again.
- razzberryman 12y ago

joshmn 12y ago

I'm curious what the backend of this (and sites like Hipmunk) uses.

djloche 12y ago

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.

razzberryman 12y ago

I hadn't heard of this site until the airlines tried to shut it down. Nice job airlines! Hopefully Zaman can hang in there.

bohnej 12y ago

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.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

astanway 12y ago

His legal fund is here: http://www.gofundme.com/skiplagged http://www.gofundme.com/skiplagged I encourage everyone to donate.

kartikkumar 12y ago

What I don't understand is this statement: > "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." 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. 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.

chrismcb 12y ago
Typically if you miss a leg, any leg, they will then cancel the rest of your itinerary. They won't give you a refund, but it still falls under the normal missed flight rules. To me this is more fraud on their part than you not flying a portion if the itinerary
- kartikkumar 12y ago
  Yea exactly, seems like they want to have their cake and it eat. I presume that they are aware of the fact that a heavy-handed approach towards dealing with hidden-city tickets is the worst way to deter it, but I suspect that it's what investors want to see [1] [1]

brianbreslin 12y ago

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?)

andrewrice 12y ago
Not sure about the tool specifically, but I know that tickets to Charlotte/Atlanta from MIA/FLL are often more expensive than tickets to New York from MIA/FLL, routes which almost always have a layover in Atlanta or Charlotte. (I'm also from Miami)
xasos 12y ago
Same. Can't seem to find many flights from a major hub city (ORD). I've just been flipping in new airport codes into the custom URL[1], but haven't gotten anything yet. [1] https://skiplagged.com/?src=ORD&dst=JFK&when=2015-01-31&whenBack=2015-02-01&sort=cost https://skiplagged.com/?src=ORD&dst=JFK&when=2015-01-31&when...
ElComradio 12y ago
ERI -> PHL -> NYC is half price of ERI -> PHL last time I looked. Maybe the tool works best from smaller airports.

joliv 12y ago

Not sure how I feel about them asking for donations to their legal fund. They're a private business, not a charity.

TeMPOraL 12y ago

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. 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. 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.

dogma1138 12y ago

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. 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. 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$...