5 ms·

Judge throws out United Airlines lawsuit against Skiplagged.com founder

56 points by staunch 12y ago

digitalzombie 12y ago
YES! This is awesome. The founder posted a reddit post about it awhile back, that he was getting sue for gaming the system. The website basically find cheapers deal by combining tickets with lay over. Ticket A get you from LA to CA to NY. But you want to go to TX. You can just get a second ticket and skip NY and use second ticket to go CA to TX and it'll be cheaper. Good for the dude for winning. I thought it was crazy that he got sued for this.
- ubernostrum 12y ago
  He didn't "win" anything. The suit was dismissed over a jurisdiction issue. In other words, the judge didn't say "United Airlines is terrible and can't ever sue this guy because what he did is 100% legal", the judge just said "if you're going to sue him, do it in a jurisdiction where he lives or operates his business". Which means, if they want to, United can simply file the suit in the correct geographic location and continue on. Also, buying a hidden-city ticket is usually a bad idea since to use it you do have to violate the airline's terms, which can cost you any frequent-flier benefits you might ever have hoped to accrue, and you can't check any bags (since the bags may go on to the ticketed destination regardless of whether you hop off halfway there).
  - luma 12y ago
    The airlines' own policies have made checked baggage a serious burden, and frequent-flier programs don't accumulate free travel at nearly the rate that they used to. As such, the downsides to booking hidden-city tickets are a lot less significant than they used to be, and it's entirely due to the airlines' own behaviors. I used to commute by air weekly in the pre-9/11 days and used hidden city bookings every week. Not only did it save my company money, the airlines didn't check to see if you actually boarded the second leg of the flight so you'd accumulate mileage for the leg(s) you skipped. The result was a lower-cost round trip flight with 1000 extra miles banked every week.
  - maaku 12y ago
    Or have a return ticket on the same reservation. The bags will not go to the destination however. They should delay takeoff and pull them off the plane when you don't get on.
    - ubernostrum 12y ago
      In theory, your bags aren't supposed to take a flight you didn't take unless they're catching up to you after being delayed/lost. In practice, not so much. My favorite example: a couple years ago when I was regularly flying in and out of DCA (from Kansas City), sometimes I'd take the direct flight and sometimes I'd take a connection in Charlotte. But several times when I took the connection, I'd arrive in Kansas City to find my bags waiting in the airline baggage office, since they'd taken the direct flight and arrived a couple hours earlier.
- clay_to_n 12y ago
  My understanding was this suit was just to cost him some legal fees - they knew it would be thrown out based on jurisdiction. I expect them to re-file in the correct state.
  - joesmo 12y ago
    The judge also knew that they knew this. I wonder if they had to pay fines or extra costs for wasting the court's time. It seems to me that this kind of case is much more egregious as far as wasting time and money intentionally and that there should be incredibly heavy fines when it's done intentionally.
zaroth 12y ago
Shame on the airlines for such a gaping hole in their pricing model, but hacking the system like this isn't without its negative externalities... When you buy that stopover ticket and ditch the connection, you're likely to have gate agents calling over the intercom for you repeatedly while a plane full of passengers could be waiting for you to show up. I've been in plenty of planes which pushed back a few minutes early after a quick boarding, and it's always a nice change from the typical late departure. The idea of a full plane ready-to-go save for a passenger who had no intention of showing up in the first place doesn't sit well with me. I've also had plenty of flights where I've timed it wrong and been sprinting to the gate with just under 5 minutes left on the clock. Sometimes you make it, sometimes you miss it. But the more common-place connection dropping becomes, the more likely the airlines are to close that gate at exactly 5 minutes pre-flight even with a checked in passenger unboarded, which makes flying overall just a little bit worse for everyone. But on the whole, I despise the pricing games that airlines play a lot more than any hack a passenger can come up with to beat them at their own game. Trying to book a flight last week and it seemed like every single time I reran the search the prices were up again another $20. It's definite race-to-the-bottom pricing strategies. I understand that as seats sell the lowest available price changes, but it seems like even existing inventory is being repriced in real time. I think the price for a specific seat should not be changing more than once per 24 hours, or better yet, once per 7 days.
- noonespecial 12y ago
  Trying to book a flight last week and it seemed like every single time I reran the search the prices were up again another $20.(1) They were. Clear your cookies. Use different browsers. I've found firefox on a Mac yields more expensive tickets than firefox on PC!!! The cheapest setup? Windows XP SP2. (1)http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/columnist/mcgee/2013/04/03/do-travel-deals-change-based-on-your-browsing-history/2021993/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/columnist/mcgee/2013/04...
- notahacker 12y ago
  If airlines can't play pricing games there will be fewer flights and higher average prices. Airlines make an average of $7 per passenger, so those last minute $100 hikes to ticket prices or higher ticket prices for in-demand direct flights generally aren't buying private jets for airline executives, they're making the route actually viable to operate. If an airline sells a large block of seats or its competitor sells out and is now 99% certain they'll fill the flight at a higher price, why should they be forced to hold the price at the same level just because it's still Tuesday?
tzz 12y ago
What API service does this person use to find these cheap tickets? Or are there any good API service providers to find ticket price?
zippergz 12y ago
The biggest problem I have with skiplagged is that I know the airlines WILL find a way to prevent this if people are doing it en masse. Make no mistake. And it's virtually guaranteed that whatever they do to stop it will not benefit passengers. In the best case, it will only hurt the people using these tricks, but I'd be willing to bet there will be some collateral damage. That's the main reason I think it's shortsighted to massively publish loopholes like this. If just a few people are doing it, they'll ignore it. But when someone creates a highly visible service like this to encourage it, there's a good chance it will become too common for them to ignore. If the expected outcome of that would be that the loophole was closed in a way that makes pricing more fair for everyone, great. But I can't see how anyone who pays attention to how airlines operate could expect that to be the case. In the short term, we win. In the long term, we lose.

56 points by staunch 12y ago

YES! This is awesome. The founder posted a reddit post about it awhile back, that he was getting sue for gaming the system. The website basically find cheapers deal by combining tickets with lay over. Ticket A get you from LA to CA to NY. But you want to go to TX. You can just get a second ticket and skip NY and use second ticket to go CA to TX and it'll be cheaper. Good for the dude for winning. I thought it was crazy that he got sued for this.

ubernostrum 12y ago
He didn't "win" anything. The suit was dismissed over a jurisdiction issue. In other words, the judge didn't say "United Airlines is terrible and can't ever sue this guy because what he did is 100% legal", the judge just said "if you're going to sue him, do it in a jurisdiction where he lives or operates his business". Which means, if they want to, United can simply file the suit in the correct geographic location and continue on. Also, buying a hidden-city ticket is usually a bad idea since to use it you do have to violate the airline's terms, which can cost you any frequent-flier benefits you might ever have hoped to accrue, and you can't check any bags (since the bags may go on to the ticketed destination regardless of whether you hop off halfway there).
- luma 12y ago
  The airlines' own policies have made checked baggage a serious burden, and frequent-flier programs don't accumulate free travel at nearly the rate that they used to. As such, the downsides to booking hidden-city tickets are a lot less significant than they used to be, and it's entirely due to the airlines' own behaviors. I used to commute by air weekly in the pre-9/11 days and used hidden city bookings every week. Not only did it save my company money, the airlines didn't check to see if you actually boarded the second leg of the flight so you'd accumulate mileage for the leg(s) you skipped. The result was a lower-cost round trip flight with 1000 extra miles banked every week.
- maaku 12y ago
  Or have a return ticket on the same reservation. The bags will not go to the destination however. They should delay takeoff and pull them off the plane when you don't get on.
  - ubernostrum 12y ago
    In theory, your bags aren't supposed to take a flight you didn't take unless they're catching up to you after being delayed/lost. In practice, not so much. My favorite example: a couple years ago when I was regularly flying in and out of DCA (from Kansas City), sometimes I'd take the direct flight and sometimes I'd take a connection in Charlotte. But several times when I took the connection, I'd arrive in Kansas City to find my bags waiting in the airline baggage office, since they'd taken the direct flight and arrived a couple hours earlier.
clay_to_n 12y ago
My understanding was this suit was just to cost him some legal fees - they knew it would be thrown out based on jurisdiction. I expect them to re-file in the correct state.
- joesmo 12y ago
  The judge also knew that they knew this. I wonder if they had to pay fines or extra costs for wasting the court's time. It seems to me that this kind of case is much more egregious as far as wasting time and money intentionally and that there should be incredibly heavy fines when it's done intentionally.

zaroth 12y ago

Shame on the airlines for such a gaping hole in their pricing model, but hacking the system like this isn't without its negative externalities... When you buy that stopover ticket and ditch the connection, you're likely to have gate agents calling over the intercom for you repeatedly while a plane full of passengers could be waiting for you to show up. I've been in plenty of planes which pushed back a few minutes early after a quick boarding, and it's always a nice change from the typical late departure. The idea of a full plane ready-to-go save for a passenger who had no intention of showing up in the first place doesn't sit well with me. I've also had plenty of flights where I've timed it wrong and been sprinting to the gate with just under 5 minutes left on the clock. Sometimes you make it, sometimes you miss it. But the more common-place connection dropping becomes, the more likely the airlines are to close that gate at exactly 5 minutes pre-flight even with a checked in passenger unboarded, which makes flying overall just a little bit worse for everyone. But on the whole, I despise the pricing games that airlines play a lot more than any hack a passenger can come up with to beat them at their own game. Trying to book a flight last week and it seemed like every single time I reran the search the prices were up again another $20. It's definite race-to-the-bottom pricing strategies. I understand that as seats sell the lowest available price changes, but it seems like even existing inventory is being repriced in real time. I think the price for a specific seat should not be changing more than once per 24 hours, or better yet, once per 7 days.

noonespecial 12y ago
Trying to book a flight last week and it seemed like every single time I reran the search the prices were up again another $20.(1) They were. Clear your cookies. Use different browsers. I've found firefox on a Mac yields more expensive tickets than firefox on PC!!! The cheapest setup? Windows XP SP2. (1)http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/columnist/mcgee/2013/04/03/do-travel-deals-change-based-on-your-browsing-history/2021993/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/columnist/mcgee/2013/04...
notahacker 12y ago
If airlines can't play pricing games there will be fewer flights and higher average prices. Airlines make an average of $7 per passenger, so those last minute $100 hikes to ticket prices or higher ticket prices for in-demand direct flights generally aren't buying private jets for airline executives, they're making the route actually viable to operate. If an airline sells a large block of seats or its competitor sells out and is now 99% certain they'll fill the flight at a higher price, why should they be forced to hold the price at the same level just because it's still Tuesday?

tzz 12y ago

What API service does this person use to find these cheap tickets? Or are there any good API service providers to find ticket price?

zippergz 12y ago

The biggest problem I have with skiplagged is that I know the airlines WILL find a way to prevent this if people are doing it en masse. Make no mistake. And it's virtually guaranteed that whatever they do to stop it will not benefit passengers. In the best case, it will only hurt the people using these tricks, but I'd be willing to bet there will be some collateral damage. That's the main reason I think it's shortsighted to massively publish loopholes like this. If just a few people are doing it, they'll ignore it. But when someone creates a highly visible service like this to encourage it, there's a good chance it will become too common for them to ignore. If the expected outcome of that would be that the loophole was closed in a way that makes pricing more fair for everyone, great. But I can't see how anyone who pays attention to how airlines operate could expect that to be the case. In the short term, we win. In the long term, we lose.