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Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz

skiplagged.com

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Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz

#101

Post by chrismcb »

kartikkumar wrote: post #93

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,…

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

Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz

#102

Post by Dylan16807 »

micampe wrote: post #98
Dylan16807 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They paid for the seat. It's not disrespectful to buy something you don't need when the supply isn't limited. And the supply of plane seats isn't limited; the more people buying seats, the more seats there are for you to purchase, on average. Looking at a single possible outcome and using it to complain about the entire practice is foolish.

On average, you and I eat half a chicken. I'm not the one considering one single outcome, if anything I feel like I'm the only one in these comments considering a different possible side effect of the trick.

>On average, you and I eat half a chicken.

I have no idea what you're trying to say. There are millions of people involved. Averages make sense to use.

For example maybe 450k are unable to get a ticket because a plane filled up with non-riders, and 550k are able to get a ticket when they couldn't before because additional capacity was allocated to the route. Is it 'disrespectful'? Hell no, in my view. It's just shuffling what are fundamentally random numbers. These people are buying tickets too late to be assured seats. Some will get them, some won't, and buying your own is not a negative unless you do something like coordinate to buy out an entire route.

Edit:

>I'm not the one considering one single outcome

Yes you are. You are only considering the possible downsides of a purchase. I could use a similar argument to say that nobody should ever buy anything non-critical because stock might run out and screw over the person behind them.

And then the economy collapses.

Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz

#103

Post by micampe »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #102
micampe wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On average, you and I eat half a chicken. I'm not the one considering one single outcome, if anything I feel like I'm the only one in these comments considering a different possible side effect of the trick.

>On average, you and I eat half a chicken. I have no idea what you're trying to say. There are millions of people involved. Averages make sense to use. For example maybe 450k are unable to get a ticket because a plane filled up with non-riders, and 550k are able to get a ticket when they couldn't before because additional capacity was allocated to the route. Is it 'disrespectful'? Hell no, in my view. It's just shuff…

No. I don't need to discuss the other effects because everyone else is discussing those. I'm adding another point of view to the conversation, it doesn't mean I don't understand the other side.

Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz

#104

Post by chrismcb »

agotterer wrote: post #36

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

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

Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz

#105

Post by Dylan16807 »

micampe wrote: post #103
Dylan16807 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>On average, you and I eat half a chicken. I have no idea what you're trying to say. There are millions of people involved. Averages make sense to use. For example maybe 450k are unable to get a ticket because a plane filled up with non-riders, and 550k are able to get a ticket when they couldn't before because additional capacity was allocated to the route. Is it 'disrespectful'? Hell no, in my view. It's just shuff…

No. I don't need to discuss the other effects because everyone else is discussing those. I'm adding another point of view to the conversation, it doesn't mean I don't understand the other side.

>No. I don't need to discuss the other effects because everyone else is discussing those, I'm adding another point of view to the conversation, it doesn't mean I don't understand the other side.

No, 'everyone else' is not discussing the effects I'm talking about.

'everyone else' is focusing on about the person buying the split ticket.

You are focusing on the other passengers on the plane, which is a noble goal.

But you're only looking at half the picture of those other passengers.

'everyone else' is looking at 50% of the picture, you are bringing 25%, I'm showing the last 25% and how (in my opinion) it counters your argument.

The person buying the split ticket has an effect on the other passengers, but their main effect is changing which potential other passengers are able to buy tickets. Since this is a random and chaotic process subject to the butterfly effect, I declare that it is impossible to not affect it, and therefore affecting it is not disrespectful. It can only be disrespectful if you reduce the total number of seats fulfilled by other passengers. Because supply chases demand, buying extra seats should not have this effect. Therefore there is no disrespect.

Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz

#106

Post by micampe »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #105
micampe wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I don't need to discuss the other effects because everyone else is discussing those. I'm adding another point of view to the conversation, it doesn't mean I don't understand the other side.

>No. I don't need to discuss the other effects because everyone else is discussing those, I'm adding another point of view to the conversation, it doesn't mean I don't understand the other side. No, 'everyone else' is not discussing the effects I'm talking about. 'everyone else' is focusing on about the person buying the split ticket. You are focusing on the other passengers on the plane, which is a noble goal. But y…

Fair. We are looking at different scales.

Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz

#107

Post by kartikkumar »

chrismcb wrote: post #101
kartikkumar wrote: post #93

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,…

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

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]

Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz

#108

Post by sjwright »

chrismcb wrote: post #99
sjwright wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me improve that analogy. Subway update their pricing such that a footlong sells for $5 and a six inch sub costs $7. Looking at those prices, you purchase a footlong sandwich. Should Subway be allowed to demand $2 from you if they see you discarding half of the sandwich?

It is even worse, a better sandwich analogy is you buy a huge sandwich. You will eat half now and half later (you return flight) but you don't like the crust. The shop sells a crust free sandwich, but they charge more. So you buy the crust one, remove the crust and eat half. The shop owner sees you throw the crust away, he charges you with fraud AND takes the other uneaten half back.

I've read your better analogy three times and still don't understand it. Is the crust the extraneous leg of the flight?

Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz

#109

Post by pas »

jowiar wrote: post #43
cynix wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should just reduce the price of LAX-SFO and SFO-PDX accordingly, so that the cost of LAX-SFO-PDX is the sum of LAX-SFO and SFO-PDX. If I can afford to carry the passenger through LAX-SFO-PDX for $190, then I can afford to carry her LAX-SFO for $x and SFO-PDX for $(190-x).

But you have a near-full plane of passengers perfectly willing to pay $200 to fly from LAX to SFO - you're throwing away profit from all of them if you cut their fare because I'm competing for a different set of customers.

But, obviously, you have some customers who are not that willing, because they use these little hidden-city hacks. So what's the problem? You try to maintain your profits as everyone else, but before customers/passengers/clients smartened up it was easy, now you have to sue and lobby but eventually you have to directly fight against the rights of your passengers (the FAA exit fee someone proposed).

Since airlines are a high barrier to entry market regulatory capture is both likely and a real concern, just as collusion (or an emergent cartel, after all this is a general problem of the business model).

So here to answer the question of what's reasonable you'd have to know more about the operating costs and other dynamics of the market. But I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that simply forgoing that extra profit leads to a healthier market (cheaper fares, more passengers, bigger market altogether) - which is very likely, after all it is already profitable to do the A->B->C route for whatever they offer it, and if they offer it below costs, then that's basically dumping which we know long term likely hurts the market because leads to fewer participants.

Re: Skiplagged sued by United and Orbitz

#110

Post by jowiar »

colordrops wrote: post #96
jowiar wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you buy a ticket, you're entering into a contract with the airline. See pg. 11 here for the relevant bits: http://www.united.com/web/format/pdf/Contract_of_Carriage.pd...

Once again, what law or contract has skiplagged broken? They do not purchase tickets, and they do not enter contracts with airlines.

IANAL, but I would imagine that they're in a similar situation to ThePirateBay -- "We aren't doing anything wrong - we're just giving information to other people how they can". I'm curious how the case is going to shake out.
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