Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz
skiplagged.com
Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz
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Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz
#2Ignoring 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.
Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz
#3Ignoring 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…
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.
Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz
#4After reading the article, I'm kind of confused. What is the public-safety concern with this behavior?
Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz
#5This 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.
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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.
Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz
#6Ignoring 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…
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.
Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz
#7After reading the article, I'm kind of confused. What is the public-safety concern with this behavior?
It's a dog-whistle that they'd like it to be a TSA crime.
Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz
#8After reading the article, I'm kind of confused. What is the public-safety concern with this behavior?
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.
Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz
#9This 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…
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.
Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz
#10Ignoring 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…
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.
According to saryant's comment, sounds like you get banned from the airline, just like (winning) card counters get banned from casinos.