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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 cheaper

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 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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.

ubernostrum 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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.