> Skiplagging is not illegal, but airlines view it as a policy violation that is grounds for termination of a traveler’s entire itinerary since the airline can't sell the empty seat in the onward flight.
The poor airline, unable to sell an empty seat because ... checks notes ... the seat is already sold to someone, and that person decided not to show up. Truly the horror. Just think of all the revenue the airline lost because they couldn't charge more for a shorter flight and now have to fly the last leg with less weight
But it seems like the entire court case was mostly centered around the legality of the branding of the website. I guess overall the guy behind skiplagged will be happy to have gotten away with what amounts to 10% of revenue in exchange for a lot of publicity.
Yeah I was thinking while reading this- aren’t they actually allowed to sell that empty seat already since they are allowed to oversell? What do they want to do here? Triple dip?
Ideally, prices should be consistent with effective costs.
Practically, I would be content if prices of any single leg couldn't be negative. If leg A costs a and leg B costs b, the cost of A+B can be lower than a+b (you can offer bundles, discounts, etc.); just not less than either a or b.
If you play "tricks", the consumer has the right to use such tricks to their benefit.
Will this verdict stop Skiplagged from continuing its business in the future, either legally or financially? Or is it more like a one-time penalty they have to pay
It's 4.7 million each for trademark infringement and "disgorgement from the travel site's revenues"
First one is a "So what, just remove the American Airlines trademarks". They can drop them and say all good, and presumably not get sued again.
Second one is about what Skiplag was doing itself; I.E. cutting into AA's profits. If they continue to do this, the next court case will be much more expensive. Most courts don't like it when you get sued for something and treat it like the cost of doing business, and AA is big enough that I'd count on them bringing suit again.
The trademark infringement recieved no damages, the damages were for copyright infringement. "Jurors declined to award any damages for trademark infringement"
Just four airlines control 80% of the airline industry — the most concentrated it’s ever been. And they’re using their power over consumers, and airports, to jack up prices.
Funny, in the rental market, most states literally _very enthusiastically_ enforce a housing regulation where is staunchly illegal charge rent to two people for the same property, regardless of whatever contracts they've signed. So you know, how the airlines might book 103% of capacity on a plane? oh yeah, straight to jail. Guy signed a lease and defaulted, you find a substitute renter and you don't cancel the original tenant's payments? also, believe it or not, straight to jail.
Houses are perhaps the exception, because hotel rooms, b&b's, cars, and many other rentals that are sold as services don't benefit from the same protection. I'd postulate it's because a house is not considered replaceable with another one or with a refund, while car rides, flights and short-term accommodations are.
> Skiplagging is not illegal, but airlines view it as a policy violation that is grounds for termination of a traveler’s entire itinerary since the airline can't sell the empty seat in the onward flight.
'Can't' or 'aren't supposed to'? Airlines oversell flights ALL THE TIME. This just allows them to double sell the seat without having to ask anyone to volunteer for a free flight credit on a later flight. Seems like a win-win.
Also... they DID sell that seat. To the person that bought it, and paid for it, and then didn't use it. They didn't cost the airline any money. They paid for the seat. They don't get the money back for the seat they don't use. The airline keeps the money for it, while not incurring the costs of filling it.
I'm astonished it's currently legal for airlines to ban passengers for optimizing their ticket fares—for taking the offers the airlines themselves publicly tender, and being too competent at choosing at the best one.
- "American reportedly removed a 17-year-old from a flight last year and banned him for three years when he tried to fly from Gainesville, Florida, to Charlotte, North Carolina, on a ticket with a final destination of New York City. The ticket was supposedly cheaper than booking a flight to Charlotte alone."
There ought to be a consumer protection law about it. Not one specific to airlines, but a universal protection—a "right to optimize", if you will. If you ban customers for taking advantage of a publicly-advertised offer, then why are you allowed to advertise that offer in the first place?
Important note: "skiplagging" while frowned upon and grounds for an airline banning individuals from using them; is not why skiplagged is paying AA $9.4M.
From the article:
Paul Yetter, an attorney for American with Yetter Coleman in Houston, told jurors during opening statements that Skiplagged is not an authorized agent of the airline yet "dresses up" its website with American's trademarks to look legitimate and fool consumers into thinking they are buying from the airline.
> "They ordered New York-based Skiplagged to pay *$4.7 million in disgorgement from the travel site’s revenues* and another $4.7 million for copyright infringement."
The fine is half trademark infringement, half for "costing" AA money through not letting them resell the seat themselves
My bad, thanks for pointing that out. IANAL and generally illiterate when it comes to lawyer-speak, but it sounds like the cost(disgorgement) was due to just being an unauthorized re-seller on top of copyright violation am I right?
The title of the article & and the article itself does make it sound like AA were awarded the money directly because of the practice of 'skiplagging'... which doesn't seem to be the case. Though it's probably the reason they were targeted in the first place as ejddhbrbrrnrn said.
Damnit - I should know by now not to use the two interchangeably (especially after using the correct term in the quote!). Thanks for the correction here and below
Agreed. I like the idea of being hostile to the airlines so I’ve used Skiplagged to search for flights before but I’ve never found a hidden city itinerary that I actually wanted to take.
I’m guessing it probably makes sense with certain airports with high fees near concentrations of wealth? E.g. maybe London->NYC costs more than London(->NYC)->Albany because NYC airports have high fees and airlines presume wealthier clientele bound for NYC?
I don’t even think it’s a “wealthier clientele” thing.
Some routes are literally subsidized - for example, the Essential Air Service program pays airlines to run flights to places that would otherwise be unprofitable to fly to, and due to the grants the airlines can offer the complete route for (relatively) cheap. So, for example, it might be expensive to fly New York to Chicago, but subsidized (and cheaper) to fly New York to Podunk via Chicago. But if lots of travelers catch wind of this, and pretend to go to Podunk only to get off at Chicago, then the air carrier doesn’t get their subsidy.
That's an interesting hypothesis, but at least in my experience the flights where skiplagging has been viable have always been between 2 major airports, with a flight to a third major airport as the skipped leg. Looking at some examples on skiplagged.com right now, I see flights where BWI->LAX is cheaper if you book BWI->LAX->SFO but skip the LAX->SFO leg. Same with BWI->CLT by booking BWI->CLT->NAS. But those LA to SF or Charlotte to Nassau legs aren't subsidized flights to East Podunk.
Essential Air Service flights might sometimes play a role here but from what I've seen I think the thing that creates opportunities for skiplagging is just typical airline revenue management doing it's inscrutable magic setting prices between 2 cities without any concern for the prices of the individual legs.
Don't airlines have to pay for and/or actively use slots at some major airports? So New York to Chicago is a "mandatory" flight for the airline, but Chicago to Podunk is scheduled based on demand.
I think due to the "nobody would run it without subsidy" nature of the Essential Air Service subsidies, the airlines themselves often pawn it off to a regional carrier wearing their skin under license (American Eagle, Delta Express, sort of thing). The traffic usually is only enough to justify a puddle-jumper that's not their core fleet or operational competency anyway.
The missing point in your argument though is that the people doing this didn't want to go to the destination. So if this wasn't an option, getting off before the subsidized destination, they wouldn't be flying anyway and the airline still wouldn't be getting the subsidy.
I'm still not seeing any real answer how this practice can exist in a true free market and how it doesn't indicate collusion in the airline industry.
In the A->B->C example, probably the subsidy they get for B->C is so much higher than its real cost that they can use such "profit" to finance part of the first leg. If you skip the final leg, you risk spoiling their scheme to extract more-than-needed money from the government.
Even if the subsidy for B->C is not higher than the real cost at all... if they set their A->B->C ticket prices such that (revenues == expenses), and a skipped leg results in any hit to revenue (i.e. losing a subsidy of amount x) along with a reduction in expenses (i.e. less weight means less fuel of amount y), then they are going to take a loss any time x>y.
Sorry, how is this different from what I said? The condition x>y, with x the subsidy and y the expense, is exactly what I intended with "subsidy they get [is] higher than its real cost".
Oh, I interpreted your "its real cost" as everything that goes into the service (i.e. everything the airline does to hold up their end of the deal, which goes well beyond fuel) whereas in my version I'm defining y far more narrowly: the fuel needed to haul the weight of the person.
The subsidy could easily exceed the fuel, which means losing the subsidy despite saving on fuel is something the airline legitimately wants to avoid. They won't be in a worse position than if the seat went unsold, but it'll be worse than if they had a flying passenger.
The former is more common than you might think: hub-and-spoke airlines compete on route pricing, but if an airline doesn’t offer a particular direct flight, then it has to offer an indirect one for a comparable price.
This is why you get these weird pricing patterns where the direct flight costs more than the indirect one. They’re deliberately trimming their margins on certain passengers to compete, hoping to make up the lost revenue with direct fliers (or fliers on more expensive routes).
The restrictions aren’t that onerous if you’re really trying to fly for cheap. Business travelers probably won’t do it, but there’s lots of folks who just fly for personal reasons (think: sports fans going to their team’s game, people visiting family, etc.) and who might be willing to put up with the slight risks for a cheaper fare.
Seems like this practice in general shows that a true free market doesn't exist in the airline industry. If it did exist then flights like these wouldn't be profitable to sell in the first place.
We tried a free market airline industry. We rightfully second guessed that for the huge safety problems it created. We then recognized that the skies belong to the public, collectively, and access to it must be licensed as such and commercial activity within it strictly regulated.
Which would all probably work were it not for the obvious pathway to regulatory capture this creates. You need strong regulators that are heavily incentivized towards the American public and not the particular private airlines that happen to currently have a contract.
I wonder, if like banking, it would be smart to separate the companies that own the planes from the companies that actually operate them. A disinterested third party that actually holds the assets might serve as an actual wedge between the FAA and the "major airlines."
I could imagine situations where airlines need to get pilots/crew/planes to some location for the next flight and somehow recoup costs there, and are willing to cut prices on such multileg flights to take business away from their competitors... but I generally agree with your statement.
That doesn't explain why that would make the price cheaper to keep someone on the flight than letting them get off. It may be a meaningless difference, or even the same price, but cheaper to have the extra leg doesn't make sense if there is competition. That person has weight if nothing else and that costs money to haul.
Yep, it is not just travelers going to destinations that compete for chairs on an airplane but also workers of the airline too. The larger airlines have to balance these priorities
Skiplagging is a very old practice. What's new here is just the website.
Before 9/11 there was nothing the airlines could do to stop it because you didn't have to show ID to match your ticket. So they couldn't ban you even if they figured out you were skiplagging.
Now they can and they do. Which is why the airlines love that the government "forces" them to check your ID.
> Now they can and they do. Which is why the airlines love that the government "forces" them to check your ID.
Where is this happening? On over 100 domestic flights post-9/11, I've never had an airline review my ID - only on international flights has this occurred.
The TSA or their private equivalent will match your ID to a boarding pass, but even now that's going away at major airports in favor of ID scans.
Regardless, given the above: there's nothing stopping you from booking a refundable fare on Airline B (or even a $0 Frontier flight), using that boarding pass to get through security, and then using whatever name you want on a flight with Airline A.
Yes there is. The airlines used to check IDs themselves. Now their computers talk to those of the TSA so the TSA effectively does this for them.
In your scenario, when you fail to board Airplane B that event gets flagged. Not a huge deal but you might have a problem getting a refund. When you try to board Airplane A the fun begins. You will be stopped because the ID for that boarding pass never went through a TSA checkpoint.
What if you go back through TSA again, this time with the other boarding pass? They only check IDs now, so you'd need a second ID that also had your picture on it. Drivers licences were easy to forge 20 years ago. Not so much now, especially with the RealID mandate.
Even then it wouldn't work because TSA has face recognition now. If you try to go through a second time with a different ID but a similar face on the same day, you will almost certainly be detained and probably arrested.
I agree with most of your points, except I'm not sure about this:
> when you fail to board Airplane B that event gets flagged. Not a huge deal but you might have a problem getting a refund
The passenger would cancel that refundable B ticket right after security, before boarding begins. Or is this impossible after checking into the flight which happens before security?
I didn’t know “skiplagging” was a thing, but I actually did it once myself and almost got in trouble for it.
1. I booked roundtrip A → B → C and C → B → A.
2. I skipped B → C because I needed to spend a few days at B.
3. I booked a separate one-way B → C which was cheap because it was a short hop.
What I didn’t realize was that the airline canceled my C → B → A return trip when I skipped B → C. Fortunately, I discovered this early when I spoke to customer service about an unrelated question: the airline kindly explained to me what happened, warned me not to do it again, and rebooked my flight back.
Well, Skiplagged is still in business and this probably just drives more traffic to their website as this raises awareness. Apparently they have had more than $100M in ticket sales, if not much more.
Any idea what percentage of their sales are actually hidden city itineraries? Every time I’ve searched with them I’ve seen few or no hidden city results, but I guess it’s neat to be aware of the option if it does exist.
I really, really don't understand the airlines' problem with this. The seat was paid for, if nobody is in it, they save a fraction of a penny on fuel. What do they lose if the seat is empty vs the person still sitting in it? They get the exact same revenue. I'm so confused.
Of course they can sell the seat - airlines oversell all the time since they know some people won't show. Just need to predict that with a few statistics and sell some extra tickets for the skiplagged leg. I think airlines should be required to make tickets to intermediary destinations no more expensive than the same class fare to the final destination then there is no incentive to book a skiplagged ticket and it would benefit consumers in less competitive markets. A case of a good regulation. Right now fares to popular competitive destinations are subsidized by price gouging on less popular destinations.
I don't understand the airline's argument that they couldn't resell the seat. Of course not, it was already paid for! Can someone make sense of their argument for me, as it seems prima facia illegitimate.
Legacy US airlines don’t always price their seats logically based on fuel, tax, time, and wear costs.
The price for a given multi-leg trip is sometimes discounted by Some Amount from the actual price you would pay buying each leg individually.
This is exploitable by purchasing a discounted fare with (H) hops at price P(H) in order to fly (H-X) hops, where X > 0 and P(H-X) > P(H). I offer no speculation as to their motivations in selling a ticket where P(H-X) > P(H) but I certainly don’t think kind thoughts towards them for the outcomes it creates in airline pricing.
Their complaint against consumers is, in summary, “we could have charged a higher price P(H-X) for the seat that was left empty if the customer had not exploited this P(H) loophole in our pricing, and we deserve to be paid that difference.” This is not strictly relevant to the lawsuit, which is against an agency rather than a consumer, but helps explain their motivations for prosecuting an agency site for exploiting it.
Their complaint against the third party website is both different and more nuanced, but ultimately stems from a site making it trivial for consumers to find and exploit this loophole without domain-specific knowledge known primarily to travel agents and hobbyists. Thus their extreme focus on trademark; if they had succeeded in that claim, they would potentially be able to weaponize the judgment against any site that doesn’t pay them a bribe for showing their logo in association with interpretations of flight pricing data, which would let them harvest millions of dollars of new passive revenue streams; as well as having the option to terminate the existence of any site they dislike that shows their logo or brand. Their trademark claim was denied in full.
The airlines are within their legal rights to cancel tickets and refuse business from customers who exploit this loophole, so long as they do so indiscriminately with respect to the protected characteristics of the individuals refused.
There are no regulations requiring simple coherent pricing where leg+leg+leg = multi-leg fares, either, which is why ITA Software’s Matrix and its ability to resolve traveling salesman pricing problems across the fare code hellscape was worth a billion of dollars to Google.
If you’d booked (H) then you would have paid more; they’re upset that you cost them the unrealized profit of P(H-X) - P(H), and also upset at the lost opportunity of selling a double-booked ticket to another passenger into your empty seat for an additional P(whatever), without having to refund you for your unused flight leg. Two profit opportunities lost for one service rendered is, to a corporation, roughly equivalent to kicking someone while they’re down, and they tend to react spitefully when these are exploited at scale.
Their claim of dishonesty is simply a guise for their desire to charge you the difference P(H-X) - P(H) when you deboard early, which under current law they are prohibited from doing. Your individual fuel costs are a negligible fraction of that amount, and while your absence is indeed pure profit for them in terms of the raw expense of providing services to you, they’re greedily maximizing all possible profits scenarios in order to claim injury and damages here.
To emphasize, I think this is bullshit whining about a predatory pricing practice being exploited in favor of consumers. I also predict that lawsuits will earn the travel industries a lot more strict pricing regulations if they continue to sue over this practice, so that consumers can expect the prices of individual legs to add up to the price of a multi-leg trip — whether on plane, train, or bus — and which would fully neutralize both their complaints and the exploit. (In review, it could also end up costing them the right to overbook if their legacy practices earn an appropriate degree of scrutiny.)
> consumers can expect the prices of individual legs to add up to the price of a multi-leg trip — whether on plane, train, or bus — and which would fully neutralize both their complaints and the exploit.
Doesn't have to be strictly equal to sum of individual legs, even a triangle inequality relationship (multi-leg combined ticket should cost no more than the sum of individual legs) would be okay.
Technically, yes, that would close the specific single loophole exploitation; but that still enables airlines to do price undercutting in a single src/dst pairing without having to offer the benefits of that discount to the folks living at one of the stops between src and dst:
P(A-B-C) = 10
P(A-B) = 15
P(B-C) = 15
It’s neither fair nor logical for people traveling from B to pay more to reach C than those traveling from A, when the flight is already stopping at B regardless. So if pricing regulation comes into effect, I don’t expect they would permit that either.
I don't understand how someone can be barred from an airline because they got a better deal on it. At a certain point there must be an individual who would've been barred from every airline due to this at which point it becomes some sort of cruel punishment on an individual from a whole industry for really doing nothing illegal or wrong or causing a nuisance.
Airlines shouldn't be allowed to barr people simply for skipping a leg on a flight, no matter how much it may annoy someone in management.
>I don't understand how someone can be barred from an airline because they got a better deal on it.
Because they cause a truly stupid amount of inefficiencies and hassle with their desire to save a buck at the cost of everyone else.
I think American Airlines's marketing and legal teams dropped the ball as far as how they impressed the court of public opinion, as demonstrated by this very thread. "We couldn't make more money" will almost never speak to the common man.
But speaking as someone who's familiar with the aviation industry and flies very often, shenanigans like this cause tremendous losses of time and money when margins are razor thin.
A missing passenger means lost time trying to find that passenger which leads to flight delays. Once a passenger is deemed missing, their checked luggage if any needs to be offloaded which causes additional checks of the flight manifest and the cargo bay, leading to even more lost time and flight delays.
A seat unoccupied-but-occupied means that seat couldn't have been used to deadhead the crew for another flight, which can include crews from other airlines. This makes scheduling logistics even harder than it needed to be, leading to inefficiencies and in the worst case flight cancellations.
This all causes problems for people on the ground: The ground crew at the airports, the flight crew on the plane, the logistics team scheduling everything, and more. It's not just middle management that everyone here likes to flip off.
Also a coup de grace for the audience here: Someone skiplagging means the airline flies an empty seat that should have been occupied, wasting fuel. Skiplagging is bad for the environment.
I am very happy American Airlines won this, and I will say the same with any other airline. If you want to fly somewhere, buy a ticket specifically for that. If you engage in skiplagging, you are sincerely a greedy fucking bastard and deserve every blacklisting you get.
Nobody who is skiplagging is checking bags. If someone is a no-show the plane should not be held back to wait for them. The ground crew can call out their name a few times but when it is time to leave close the doors and leave.
The part about skipplagging causing scheduling issues for deadhead is irrelevant as it doesn’t actually cause scheduling issues, the crew will deadhead on the path they were always planned to do and skiplagging does not affect that.
Airlines could make these problems go away if they charged a consistent fee for each hop, but they decide to instead hang super shitty itineraries over your head hoping you will shell out more money so you don’t have to sleep on a bench in JFK.
Maybe air travel should be treated like a utility where you pay for transit between locations and the airlines need to offer a fixed cost for those transits. The prices can of course fluxuate based upon demand and other external factors like fuel prices, wages. But the airline should not be able to charge different prices based upon where you are coming from and where you are going, or what IP address you bought the tickets from, or your nationality, etc.
I understand that this will most likely make multi hop travel more expensive and single hop travel less expensive, and I think that is a worthwhile tradeoff.
Speaking of the environment, imagine if people could take single hop flights more often because they are cheaper than shittier multi hop itineraries. Right now people will take routes which are much less fuel efficient and much worse for the environment because the tickets are cheaper.
I get your point. I've watched the enlightening presentation given at MIT by an airline economist where he explains that for any route, there's no single fare that would make the route profitable. To have the convenience of modern air travel, we seemingly have to put up with the pricing games that make it possible.
I've never intentionally skiplagged, but there was one time the first leg of my journey was late, I missed my connection and I was going to be in the airport for 8 or 10 hours to catch my 1 hour flight to my final destination. I decided not to, and instead minimized my misery and bought a ticket for the 3.5 hour train ride home.
If an airline looked at that behavior and blacklisted me for not using the service I paid for, then they are the greedy fucking bastards.
I have skipped a last leg in India when I had a meeting in India during a stop-over. It was cheaper to skip it and fly home via an additional small vacation via Sri Lanka.
>there was one time the first leg of my journey was late, I missed my connection and I was going to be in the airport for 8 or 10 hours to catch my 1 hour flight to my final destination. I decided not to, and instead minimized my misery and bought a ticket for the 3.5 hour train ride home.
Two things:
1. That connection miss is strictly on the airline and they did the best they could to make ends meet. An airline worth their salt will bend backwards to make sure you are made whole as practicality allows if things like delays mess up the plans.
2. If you choose to not take them up on the rebookings, that's fine. You should at least let them know you won't be showing up, though.
“As someone familiar with the aviation industry” you should know people “skiplagging” won’t check bags, which destroys your whole argument since that’s where all the inefficiencies lie.
Now you just have a no-show at the gate (P>50% ? something they’re surely used to handle efficiently) giving them some slack to fly their overbook flight without having to bump anyone. Truly a win-win
>you should know people “skiplagging” won’t check bags
The point is that a no-show still causes hassle, and in this case hassle that didn't have to happen.
Shit happens, if you turn into a no-show due to factors outside your control nobody's gonna be angry. But if you are a deliberate no-show? All because you wanted to shave some cost? Sincerely fuck you.
Airlines choose these ticketing policies and customers react to them rationally. If the airlines allowed customers to notify them that they won't be taking the final flight without any extra costs, then they wouldn't have to worry about no-shows like this (they could even resell the seat).
The airlines are choosing their pricing mechanisms and can live with the consequences.
There is nothing rational about maliciously misleading someone in a business transaction.
>If the airlines allowed customers to notify them that they won't be taking the final flight without any extra costs,
You absolutely can: Just walk up to the nearest ticketing counter on your way out the airport and let them know you won't be flying. Simple, done. You might still get blacklisted, but you are presumably okay with the consequences.
> There is nothing rational about maliciously misleading someone in a business transaction.
Honestly at this point I think you're just being purposefully obtuse. Of course it's rational for customers to but a ticket A -> B -> C if they want to fly A -> B and the ticket A -> B -> C is cheaper than the ticket A -> B. What's irrational is for airlines to price their tickets that way.
> You absolutely can: Just walk up to the nearest ticketing counter on your way out the airport and let them know you won't be flying. Simple, done. You might still get blacklisted, but you are presumably okay with the consequences.
Once again you seem to just be willfully obtuse here. Being blacklisted is quite obviously a cost. Passengers being blacklisted means that _rational_ customers doing this won't tell the airline. If the airline didn't want passengers to skip the final leg of their flight without telling them, they could simply allow the customer to notify them without extra costs. They choose blacklisting (or charging to to "change" your ticket to not take the final flight) and this is the result.
I mean I get that you work in the airline industry and hence align your arguments to those that profit the airlines, but you really should accept that the airlines are knowingly creating this environment and that customers are just reacting exactly as you'd expect.
Merchants can price their products however they want, and they have no obligation to sell to you. Customers can purchase a product if it suits them, including the price, and they have no obligation to buy from them.
The rational thing to do if buying a ticket from A to B is too expensive is to not buy it, let alone buy a ticket that flies to C.
>Being blacklisted is quite obviously a cost.
Don't break contracts you've signed if you don't want to get penalized.
>Passengers being blacklisted means that _rational_ customers doing this won't tell the airline.
Rational customers will tell the airline that their plans need changing/cancelling. This is just common decency as a human being, my dude.
>If the airline didn't want passengers to skip the final leg of their flight without telling them, they could simply allow the customer to notify them without extra costs. They choose blacklisting (or charging to to "change" your ticket to not take the final flight) and this is the result.
Sure, because airlines (and merchants overall) don't like it when customers try to change the deal on short or no notice. That said, if it's due to outside factors most airlines will try to accomodate you.
If you want to change the deal for unjustifiable personal reasons, of course you will get penalized.
>I mean I get that you work in the airline industry and hence align your arguments to those that profit the airlines,
I'm not, and I'm not sure where you drew that conclusion from. I am familiar with the aviation industry because I have family and friends who work(ed) in it (pilots, ATC, etc.) and I am a very frequent flyer myself.
>you really should accept that the airlines are knowingly creating this environment and that customers are just reacting exactly as you'd expect.
Most customers by and large are reasonable, they buy tickets that take them to their desired destination and the airline honors it. It's not a super power to be a decent human and conduct yourself professionally.
>> I don't understand how someone can be barred from an airline because they got a better deal on it.
> Because they cause a truly stupid amount of inefficiencies and hassle with their desire to save a buck at the cost of everyone else.
This is almost entirely self-inflicted. If the airlines stopped treating people who attempt to cancel a single leg of an itinerary like borderline criminals and instead actually gave an incentive (even a small one) to cancel in advance, this problem would mostly go away.
Seriously, I’ve replaced a leg in the middle of a trip with ground transportation due to a delay, and, if I try to call the airline and tell them I’ll be missing that leg, I (a) get yelled at, (b) am threatened with cancellation of the next leg, and (c) have a heck of a time getting the airline not to follow through with (b).
If I were flying a hidden city route under these terms, I would fully understand the desire to simply no-show.
If I were involved in making regulation, I wound seriously consider requiring airlines to allow passengers to cancel single legs, with one hour notice, without penalty. Let the airlines figure out how to make it work. Charge $200 to reroute bags if needed. And, damn it, require the airline to give a partial refund if the passenger is skipping a leg because it was late (or because the previous leg was late).
Here's an idea: the airline could, you know, charge the price that the skiplagged flight would cost?
If this is impacting their margins so dearly, they should incentivize for optimizing against it: nobody would ever take a skiplagged flight if there were no pricing penalty.
> If you engage in skiplagging, you are sincerely a greedy fucking bastard
But the airline isn't greedy for this type of pricing, right?
Skipping a queue in traffic is an asshole thing to do, but we in a society give them the benefit of the doubt because we don't know what they're going through. It inconveniences literally everyone, yet it would be weird for the driver to be blocked from that road for doing so.
We shouldn't accept arbitrary restrictions from stupid megacorps.
I studied Aviation engineering with Pilot studies and am also a frequent flyer, idgaf if someone skiplags.
If a seat on a plane is empty it literally doesn't make a difference to my life as my ass is on another seat. If the empty seat is next to mine then actually that's amazing.
> This all causes problems for people on the ground
As much as delayed connection or missing passenger, they're trained to do this and it's their job to do so. They're not especially annoyed or insulted if it's due to skiplags. Also your assumption is that the person skiplagging checked in baggage which is beyond idiotic to do and to assume.
> logistics team scheduling
ops doesn't sit there and cry waiting for 1 single skiplagger with no checked bags. You know what the solution to this is actually? The airlines to allow it so then they are informed of no-shows beforehand. Simple.
> means the airline flies an empty seat that should have been occupied, wasting fuel
As I said before, if airlines allowed people to be open about their intentions to skiplag then that can be taken into account during W&B. Also 1 or 2 people skiplagging doesn't make a significant dent in fuel burn throughout the flight. Wait till you learn about how aircraft have enough fuel on board to divert - further wasting fuel!! Safety factors are destroying the environment!
> If you engage in skiplagging, you are sincerely a greedy fucking bastard and deserve every blacklisting you get.
Have you considered that people may have legitimate reasons to skiplag? i.e they cannot afford the full fare, they cannot make the following flight for other reasons?
Skip laggers are not uniquely annoying pax, most of your complaints can be made of people who fly for cheap using points - probably an even more collective nuisance. Being on a megacorps side against consumers is strange behaviour.
>legitimate reasons to skiplag? i.e they cannot afford the full fare,
Air travel is a privilege, not a right. If you can't afford a ticket, don't fucking buy it.
>they cannot make the following flight for other reasons?
Sure, but that's not skiplagging.
>Being on a megacorps side against consumers is strange behaviour.
I am siding with common decency. If you lie in the course of business just to save some pretty pennies, costing everyone else in the process, you are a scumbag and you deserve whatever comes your way.
If skiplagging becomes more common, airlines will ultimately raise prices for everyone to make up for the inefficiency and everyone loses. Screw that noise.
> Air travel is a privilege, not a right. If you can't afford a ticket, don't fucking buy it.
They did buy the ticket. Legally.
> Sure, but that's not skiplagging.
That literally is the same as skiplagging. Skiplagging is only determined on intentions, not actions as it is the same action.
> If skiplagging becomes more common, airlines will ultimately raise prices for everyone to make up for the inefficiency and everyone loses. Screw that noise.
You should be more mad about people flying for cheap with credit card points, that literally DOES raise prices for everyone. But I'm sure you do that all the time so it magically makes it okay.
Yes, that ticket is a binding contract for both sides.
If you sign a contract fully aware you don't intend to honor it, you are an asshole.
>Skiplagging is only determined on intentions,
...Yes?
I'm not sure if you're being daft. It is skiplagging to buy something with the intent to not honor the deal, it is not skiplagging if you cannot honor the deal due to factors outside your control.
>You should be more mad about people flying for cheap with credit card points, that literally DOES raise prices for everyone.
The airlines receive compensation from the banks so it's a non-issue.
Not surprised, you wouldn't be able to recognize daft if it were staring at you through the mirror.
> The airlines receive compensation from the banks so it's a non-issue.
Yeah bro the banks give out credit card points out of the kindness of their hearts, it's not like they charge merchants fees to make up for it which then get paid for by everyone in society because some cheap bozos think they're mining free amex points sitting in business class having not actually paid for it.
> If skiplagging becomes more common, airlines will ultimately raise prices for everyone to make up for the inefficiency and everyone loses. Screw that noise.
How would everyone lose? Bans against skiplagging allow airlines to divorce their ticket prices from the costs of the underlying service. If airlines were say not allowed to ban skiplagging, they would be forced to price their tickets more in line with the underlying costs (on competitive routes anyway) so we should expect some routes' ticket costs to decrease.
How about we jail airline executives and fine airlines for overselling flights, forcing people to give up their seats, banning people for skiplagging, kicking people off based on clothing, etc. If they can be so arbitrary and refuse passengers, we should just revoke their license to operate.
I implore you to explain how deplaning means they can’t be competitive.
If I jump out of the airplane halfway through a flight, how does that change their pricing beyond me saving them fuel?
The only way this makes sense is a segment rebate scheme for flights to underserved communities. But I don’t think this is what’s at play here because it’s not mentioned at all.
Half of HN works in SaaS or similar but it seems I need to explain.
Price discrimination is a selling strategy that charges customers different prices for the same product or service based on what the seller believes it can get the customer to agree to. In pure price discrimination, the seller charges each customer the maximum price they will pay. In more common forms of price discrimination, the seller segments customers into groups based on certain attributes and charges each group a different price.
Airlines famously work on razor thin margins. If they dont make their $ this way they need to charge more for the NYC full fare, and because all competitors do it it pushes those fares up. Which might be OK but what this means is skippers make it worse for people who legit follow the terms and conditions
My belief is people should honour the terms of the fare they paid for.
As for a parachute. That is silly. Of course that would add a lot of cost. A similar example is asking a bus driver to stop outside your house. Or let you jump out the open door. Lots of insurance and liability reasons not to do so.
The fact that fuel is the only aspect to a fare is obviously misinformed. It is like saying AWS only pay for data centre electricity.
You’re really struggling to explain here because you know it doesn’t make sense. It has nothing to do with price discrimination because the airline collected the fare either way.
If I offered pizza and a drink for $2 or just pizza for $5 and someone buys the former and chucks the drink, that is not their problem, it’s mine for being an idiot.
I didn’t say anything about a parachute. Don’t be dense.
Shouldn't be the opposite? If a route goes ABC, they'd have to sell AB and BC separately instead of bundled? No more "skipping" and any trip that's not direct can freely be assembled from legs on any airline?
That would save lot of money for airlines. After all if the AB and BC is properly treated as legally separate products. Then responsibility of getting to BC with AB even if the AB is delayed would be fully on customer. Too bad we were late, now pay the full fare for BC again. As you failed to show up.
I'm not sure that's the case, "offering competitive fares" implies that they are trying to charge less, however no business is going to sue for their right to charge less money. They want to charge more, and are using the legal system to help achieve that end.
> Skiplagging is not illegal, but airlines view it as a policy violation that is grounds for termination of a traveler’s entire itinerary since the airline can't sell the empty seat in the onward flight.
The poor airline, unable to sell an empty seat because ... checks notes ... the seat is already sold to someone, and that person decided not to show up. Truly the horror. Just think of all the revenue the airline lost because they couldn't charge more for a shorter flight and now have to fly the last leg with less weight
But it seems like the entire court case was mostly centered around the legality of the branding of the website. I guess overall the guy behind skiplagged will be happy to have gotten away with what amounts to 10% of revenue in exchange for a lot of publicity.
Yup, and since they routinely oversell flights, I have zero sympathy for them. Negative sympathy even
Yeah I was thinking while reading this- aren’t they actually allowed to sell that empty seat already since they are allowed to oversell? What do they want to do here? Triple dip?
They would give the seat to any standby, so the airlines are void of sympathy
And the big four more or less quit going hard on price.
Do you think ticket prices should be lower, or higher? What remedy do you prefer to achieve your goal?
Ideally, prices should be consistent with effective costs.
Practically, I would be content if prices of any single leg couldn't be negative. If leg A costs a and leg B costs b, the cost of A+B can be lower than a+b (you can offer bundles, discounts, etc.); just not less than either a or b.
If you play "tricks", the consumer has the right to use such tricks to their benefit.
Lower profits for airlines.
I prefer not to have fraud.
Will this verdict stop Skiplagged from continuing its business in the future, either legally or financially? Or is it more like a one-time penalty they have to pay
It's 4.7 million each for trademark infringement and "disgorgement from the travel site's revenues"
First one is a "So what, just remove the American Airlines trademarks". They can drop them and say all good, and presumably not get sued again.
Second one is about what Skiplag was doing itself; I.E. cutting into AA's profits. If they continue to do this, the next court case will be much more expensive. Most courts don't like it when you get sued for something and treat it like the cost of doing business, and AA is big enough that I'd count on them bringing suit again.
The trademark infringement recieved no damages, the damages were for copyright infringement. "Jurors declined to award any damages for trademark infringement"
Maybe the site should rebrand itself.
Tell people to get off if the meal on the next leg is ... checks notes... a safety hazard.
you can develop allergies at any point in life after all, so it would make sense.
If the airline doesn't want people doing this then stop doing ridiculous pricing.
The air travel industry is extremely competitive, and prices continue to fall after spiking due to the supply chain/ COVID chaos:
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/travel/travel-price-track...
Just four airlines control 80% of the airline industry — the most concentrated it’s ever been. And they’re using their power over consumers, and airports, to jack up prices.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_zWxdeq8F4 Airlines’ Secret Scheme to Keep Airfare Prices High
Funny, in the rental market, most states literally _very enthusiastically_ enforce a housing regulation where is staunchly illegal charge rent to two people for the same property, regardless of whatever contracts they've signed. So you know, how the airlines might book 103% of capacity on a plane? oh yeah, straight to jail. Guy signed a lease and defaulted, you find a substitute renter and you don't cancel the original tenant's payments? also, believe it or not, straight to jail.
Houses are perhaps the exception, because hotel rooms, b&b's, cars, and many other rentals that are sold as services don't benefit from the same protection. I'd postulate it's because a house is not considered replaceable with another one or with a refund, while car rides, flights and short-term accommodations are.
Except this happens all the time in hotels…
Exactly, so it's very likely that the seat that they are concerned with will actually be filled, based on the way they operate right now.
> Skiplagging is not illegal, but airlines view it as a policy violation that is grounds for termination of a traveler’s entire itinerary since the airline can't sell the empty seat in the onward flight.
'Can't' or 'aren't supposed to'? Airlines oversell flights ALL THE TIME. This just allows them to double sell the seat without having to ask anyone to volunteer for a free flight credit on a later flight. Seems like a win-win.
Also... they DID sell that seat. To the person that bought it, and paid for it, and then didn't use it. They didn't cost the airline any money. They paid for the seat. They don't get the money back for the seat they don't use. The airline keeps the money for it, while not incurring the costs of filling it.
I'm astonished it's currently legal for airlines to ban passengers for optimizing their ticket fares—for taking the offers the airlines themselves publicly tender, and being too competent at choosing at the best one.
- "American reportedly removed a 17-year-old from a flight last year and banned him for three years when he tried to fly from Gainesville, Florida, to Charlotte, North Carolina, on a ticket with a final destination of New York City. The ticket was supposedly cheaper than booking a flight to Charlotte alone."
There ought to be a consumer protection law about it. Not one specific to airlines, but a universal protection—a "right to optimize", if you will. If you ban customers for taking advantage of a publicly-advertised offer, then why are you allowed to advertise that offer in the first place?
Clearly there is no space under the law for common sense. They are in conflict.
Important note: "skiplagging" while frowned upon and grounds for an airline banning individuals from using them; is not why skiplagged is paying AA $9.4M.
From the article:
Paul Yetter, an attorney for American with Yetter Coleman in Houston, told jurors during opening statements that Skiplagged is not an authorized agent of the airline yet "dresses up" its website with American's trademarks to look legitimate and fool consumers into thinking they are buying from the airline.
Half right:
> "They ordered New York-based Skiplagged to pay *$4.7 million in disgorgement from the travel site’s revenues* and another $4.7 million for copyright infringement."
The fine is half trademark infringement, half for "costing" AA money through not letting them resell the seat themselves
My bad, thanks for pointing that out. IANAL and generally illiterate when it comes to lawyer-speak, but it sounds like the cost(disgorgement) was due to just being an unauthorized re-seller on top of copyright violation am I right?
The title of the article & and the article itself does make it sound like AA were awarded the money directly because of the practice of 'skiplagging'... which doesn't seem to be the case. Though it's probably the reason they were targeted in the first place as ejddhbrbrrnrn said.
The damages were for copyright not trademark infringement, they explicitly didn't give any damages for the trademark infringement.
Damnit - I should know by now not to use the two interchangeably (especially after using the correct term in the quote!). Thanks for the correction here and below
It might be why (in the sense of motivation, not law) the suit was filed though.
> no damages being awarded on the trademark claim
so authoritative yet so wrong
I'm surprised that this common enough that it's worthwhile for airlines to fight it. It requires both:
- Flight being meaningfully cheaper using hidden city
and
- Traveller is willing to deal with the restrictions (no carry-on, risk of route changing, no frequent flyer etc).
Agreed. I like the idea of being hostile to the airlines so I’ve used Skiplagged to search for flights before but I’ve never found a hidden city itinerary that I actually wanted to take.
I’m guessing it probably makes sense with certain airports with high fees near concentrations of wealth? E.g. maybe London->NYC costs more than London(->NYC)->Albany because NYC airports have high fees and airlines presume wealthier clientele bound for NYC?
I don’t even think it’s a “wealthier clientele” thing.
Some routes are literally subsidized - for example, the Essential Air Service program pays airlines to run flights to places that would otherwise be unprofitable to fly to, and due to the grants the airlines can offer the complete route for (relatively) cheap. So, for example, it might be expensive to fly New York to Chicago, but subsidized (and cheaper) to fly New York to Podunk via Chicago. But if lots of travelers catch wind of this, and pretend to go to Podunk only to get off at Chicago, then the air carrier doesn’t get their subsidy.
That's an interesting hypothesis, but at least in my experience the flights where skiplagging has been viable have always been between 2 major airports, with a flight to a third major airport as the skipped leg. Looking at some examples on skiplagged.com right now, I see flights where BWI->LAX is cheaper if you book BWI->LAX->SFO but skip the LAX->SFO leg. Same with BWI->CLT by booking BWI->CLT->NAS. But those LA to SF or Charlotte to Nassau legs aren't subsidized flights to East Podunk.
Essential Air Service flights might sometimes play a role here but from what I've seen I think the thing that creates opportunities for skiplagging is just typical airline revenue management doing it's inscrutable magic setting prices between 2 cities without any concern for the prices of the individual legs.
Don't airlines have to pay for and/or actively use slots at some major airports? So New York to Chicago is a "mandatory" flight for the airline, but Chicago to Podunk is scheduled based on demand.
I think due to the "nobody would run it without subsidy" nature of the Essential Air Service subsidies, the airlines themselves often pawn it off to a regional carrier wearing their skin under license (American Eagle, Delta Express, sort of thing). The traffic usually is only enough to justify a puddle-jumper that's not their core fleet or operational competency anyway.
The missing point in your argument though is that the people doing this didn't want to go to the destination. So if this wasn't an option, getting off before the subsidized destination, they wouldn't be flying anyway and the airline still wouldn't be getting the subsidy.
I'm still not seeing any real answer how this practice can exist in a true free market and how it doesn't indicate collusion in the airline industry.
In the A->B->C example, probably the subsidy they get for B->C is so much higher than its real cost that they can use such "profit" to finance part of the first leg. If you skip the final leg, you risk spoiling their scheme to extract more-than-needed money from the government.
Even if the subsidy for B->C is not higher than the real cost at all... if they set their A->B->C ticket prices such that (revenues == expenses), and a skipped leg results in any hit to revenue (i.e. losing a subsidy of amount x) along with a reduction in expenses (i.e. less weight means less fuel of amount y), then they are going to take a loss any time x>y.
Sorry, how is this different from what I said? The condition x>y, with x the subsidy and y the expense, is exactly what I intended with "subsidy they get [is] higher than its real cost".
Oh, I interpreted your "its real cost" as everything that goes into the service (i.e. everything the airline does to hold up their end of the deal, which goes well beyond fuel) whereas in my version I'm defining y far more narrowly: the fuel needed to haul the weight of the person.
The subsidy could easily exceed the fuel, which means losing the subsidy despite saving on fuel is something the airline legitimately wants to avoid. They won't be in a worse position than if the seat went unsold, but it'll be worse than if they had a flying passenger.
>* the restrictions (no carry-on, ...*
You mean no checked baggage, right? Carry-on is fine.
Carry-on might get gate-checked if you're unlucky.
Or worse, full customs exit, full customs entry, penalty if mismatch, in certain countries.
The former is more common than you might think: hub-and-spoke airlines compete on route pricing, but if an airline doesn’t offer a particular direct flight, then it has to offer an indirect one for a comparable price.
This is why you get these weird pricing patterns where the direct flight costs more than the indirect one. They’re deliberately trimming their margins on certain passengers to compete, hoping to make up the lost revenue with direct fliers (or fliers on more expensive routes).
The restrictions aren’t that onerous if you’re really trying to fly for cheap. Business travelers probably won’t do it, but there’s lots of folks who just fly for personal reasons (think: sports fans going to their team’s game, people visiting family, etc.) and who might be willing to put up with the slight risks for a cheaper fare.
I don't do it often, but skiplagging saved me around $500 on a single SFO-NRT leg.
Seems like this practice in general shows that a true free market doesn't exist in the airline industry. If it did exist then flights like these wouldn't be profitable to sell in the first place.
We tried a free market airline industry. We rightfully second guessed that for the huge safety problems it created. We then recognized that the skies belong to the public, collectively, and access to it must be licensed as such and commercial activity within it strictly regulated.
Which would all probably work were it not for the obvious pathway to regulatory capture this creates. You need strong regulators that are heavily incentivized towards the American public and not the particular private airlines that happen to currently have a contract.
I wonder, if like banking, it would be smart to separate the companies that own the planes from the companies that actually operate them. A disinterested third party that actually holds the assets might serve as an actual wedge between the FAA and the "major airlines."
I could imagine situations where airlines need to get pilots/crew/planes to some location for the next flight and somehow recoup costs there, and are willing to cut prices on such multileg flights to take business away from their competitors... but I generally agree with your statement.
That doesn't explain why that would make the price cheaper to keep someone on the flight than letting them get off. It may be a meaningless difference, or even the same price, but cheaper to have the extra leg doesn't make sense if there is competition. That person has weight if nothing else and that costs money to haul.
Yep, it is not just travelers going to destinations that compete for chairs on an airplane but also workers of the airline too. The larger airlines have to balance these priorities
The airlines industry is heavily regulated, as most big-money industries are.
"True free market" does not mean "complete absence of all regulations"!
Reminds me of the famous Interstate Commerce Act of 1887.
There are almost no industry without some regulatory restrictions on them.
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Skiplagging is a very old practice. What's new here is just the website.
Before 9/11 there was nothing the airlines could do to stop it because you didn't have to show ID to match your ticket. So they couldn't ban you even if they figured out you were skiplagging.
Now they can and they do. Which is why the airlines love that the government "forces" them to check your ID.
> Now they can and they do. Which is why the airlines love that the government "forces" them to check your ID.
Where is this happening? On over 100 domestic flights post-9/11, I've never had an airline review my ID - only on international flights has this occurred.
The TSA or their private equivalent will match your ID to a boarding pass, but even now that's going away at major airports in favor of ID scans.
Regardless, given the above: there's nothing stopping you from booking a refundable fare on Airline B (or even a $0 Frontier flight), using that boarding pass to get through security, and then using whatever name you want on a flight with Airline A.
> then using whatever name you want on a flight with Airline A.
Where do you live? Your boarding pass is scanned at the gate; you can’t just board any flight with your boarding pass from any other flight
Commenter was talking about buying two different boarding passes. But even so the scheme won't work.
Yes there is. The airlines used to check IDs themselves. Now their computers talk to those of the TSA so the TSA effectively does this for them.
In your scenario, when you fail to board Airplane B that event gets flagged. Not a huge deal but you might have a problem getting a refund. When you try to board Airplane A the fun begins. You will be stopped because the ID for that boarding pass never went through a TSA checkpoint.
What if you go back through TSA again, this time with the other boarding pass? They only check IDs now, so you'd need a second ID that also had your picture on it. Drivers licences were easy to forge 20 years ago. Not so much now, especially with the RealID mandate.
Even then it wouldn't work because TSA has face recognition now. If you try to go through a second time with a different ID but a similar face on the same day, you will almost certainly be detained and probably arrested.
Good luck.
I agree with most of your points, except I'm not sure about this:
> when you fail to board Airplane B that event gets flagged. Not a huge deal but you might have a problem getting a refund
The passenger would cancel that refundable B ticket right after security, before boarding begins. Or is this impossible after checking into the flight which happens before security?
Good question. I don't know. It likely depends on the airline's policies.
I also love that I don't have to ride the metal missiles with random unvetted people.
I didn’t know “skiplagging” was a thing, but I actually did it once myself and almost got in trouble for it.
1. I booked roundtrip A → B → C and C → B → A.
2. I skipped B → C because I needed to spend a few days at B.
3. I booked a separate one-way B → C which was cheap because it was a short hop.
What I didn’t realize was that the airline canceled my C → B → A return trip when I skipped B → C. Fortunately, I discovered this early when I spoke to customer service about an unrelated question: the airline kindly explained to me what happened, warned me not to do it again, and rebooked my flight back.
That is actually a different rule: the tickets have to be used in order.
Say you booked round trip A to B back to A and decide to drive from A to B. Tada! Your B to A segment is automatically cancelled as well.
In a way this is even more absurd than airlines banning hidden city ticketing.
I did this once too, and had to pay a “reinstatement fee” to get on the original trip back.
Well, Skiplagged is still in business and this probably just drives more traffic to their website as this raises awareness. Apparently they have had more than $100M in ticket sales, if not much more.
Any idea what percentage of their sales are actually hidden city itineraries? Every time I’ve searched with them I’ve seen few or no hidden city results, but I guess it’s neat to be aware of the option if it does exist.
I really, really don't understand the airlines' problem with this. The seat was paid for, if nobody is in it, they save a fraction of a penny on fuel. What do they lose if the seat is empty vs the person still sitting in it? They get the exact same revenue. I'm so confused.
They lose out on selling more expensive fares.
Then why on earth did they accept to sell me the cheaper fare?
Of course they can sell the seat - airlines oversell all the time since they know some people won't show. Just need to predict that with a few statistics and sell some extra tickets for the skiplagged leg. I think airlines should be required to make tickets to intermediary destinations no more expensive than the same class fare to the final destination then there is no incentive to book a skiplagged ticket and it would benefit consumers in less competitive markets. A case of a good regulation. Right now fares to popular competitive destinations are subsidized by price gouging on less popular destinations.
So bogus.
For those who are wondering, skiplagging does work, and can save you a boatload of $$$.
AND you have to understand the system and have some attention to detail, especially internationally.
I don't understand the airline's argument that they couldn't resell the seat. Of course not, it was already paid for! Can someone make sense of their argument for me, as it seems prima facia illegitimate.
Legacy US airlines don’t always price their seats logically based on fuel, tax, time, and wear costs.
The price for a given multi-leg trip is sometimes discounted by Some Amount from the actual price you would pay buying each leg individually.
This is exploitable by purchasing a discounted fare with (H) hops at price P(H) in order to fly (H-X) hops, where X > 0 and P(H-X) > P(H). I offer no speculation as to their motivations in selling a ticket where P(H-X) > P(H) but I certainly don’t think kind thoughts towards them for the outcomes it creates in airline pricing.
Their complaint against consumers is, in summary, “we could have charged a higher price P(H-X) for the seat that was left empty if the customer had not exploited this P(H) loophole in our pricing, and we deserve to be paid that difference.” This is not strictly relevant to the lawsuit, which is against an agency rather than a consumer, but helps explain their motivations for prosecuting an agency site for exploiting it.
Their complaint against the third party website is both different and more nuanced, but ultimately stems from a site making it trivial for consumers to find and exploit this loophole without domain-specific knowledge known primarily to travel agents and hobbyists. Thus their extreme focus on trademark; if they had succeeded in that claim, they would potentially be able to weaponize the judgment against any site that doesn’t pay them a bribe for showing their logo in association with interpretations of flight pricing data, which would let them harvest millions of dollars of new passive revenue streams; as well as having the option to terminate the existence of any site they dislike that shows their logo or brand. Their trademark claim was denied in full.
The airlines are within their legal rights to cancel tickets and refuse business from customers who exploit this loophole, so long as they do so indiscriminately with respect to the protected characteristics of the individuals refused.
There are no regulations requiring simple coherent pricing where leg+leg+leg = multi-leg fares, either, which is why ITA Software’s Matrix and its ability to resolve traveling salesman pricing problems across the fare code hellscape was worth a billion of dollars to Google.
That doesn’t answer the question though. If someone didn’t deplane and fulfilled the itinerary, it would cost the airline even more in fuel.
Their argument is complete nonsense that they could have sold the seat for more because it’s just as valid if you actually took the flight.
It’s like them taking action against you because you booked in advance and they decided they could have charged you more. WTF?
If you’d booked (H) then you would have paid more; they’re upset that you cost them the unrealized profit of P(H-X) - P(H), and also upset at the lost opportunity of selling a double-booked ticket to another passenger into your empty seat for an additional P(whatever), without having to refund you for your unused flight leg. Two profit opportunities lost for one service rendered is, to a corporation, roughly equivalent to kicking someone while they’re down, and they tend to react spitefully when these are exploited at scale.
Their claim of dishonesty is simply a guise for their desire to charge you the difference P(H-X) - P(H) when you deboard early, which under current law they are prohibited from doing. Your individual fuel costs are a negligible fraction of that amount, and while your absence is indeed pure profit for them in terms of the raw expense of providing services to you, they’re greedily maximizing all possible profits scenarios in order to claim injury and damages here.
To emphasize, I think this is bullshit whining about a predatory pricing practice being exploited in favor of consumers. I also predict that lawsuits will earn the travel industries a lot more strict pricing regulations if they continue to sue over this practice, so that consumers can expect the prices of individual legs to add up to the price of a multi-leg trip — whether on plane, train, or bus — and which would fully neutralize both their complaints and the exploit. (In review, it could also end up costing them the right to overbook if their legacy practices earn an appropriate degree of scrutiny.)
> consumers can expect the prices of individual legs to add up to the price of a multi-leg trip — whether on plane, train, or bus — and which would fully neutralize both their complaints and the exploit.
Doesn't have to be strictly equal to sum of individual legs, even a triangle inequality relationship (multi-leg combined ticket should cost no more than the sum of individual legs) would be okay.
Technically, yes, that would close the specific single loophole exploitation; but that still enables airlines to do price undercutting in a single src/dst pairing without having to offer the benefits of that discount to the folks living at one of the stops between src and dst:
P(A-B-C) = 10
P(A-B) = 15
P(B-C) = 15
It’s neither fair nor logical for people traveling from B to pay more to reach C than those traveling from A, when the flight is already stopping at B regardless. So if pricing regulation comes into effect, I don’t expect they would permit that either.
That’s a BS argument though because I might not have purchased the single leg fare from them in the first place.
There are many reasons their argument is BS, yes. Explanation successful :)
American Airlines specifically on that title
I don't understand how someone can be barred from an airline because they got a better deal on it. At a certain point there must be an individual who would've been barred from every airline due to this at which point it becomes some sort of cruel punishment on an individual from a whole industry for really doing nothing illegal or wrong or causing a nuisance.
Airlines shouldn't be allowed to barr people simply for skipping a leg on a flight, no matter how much it may annoy someone in management.
>I don't understand how someone can be barred from an airline because they got a better deal on it.
Because they cause a truly stupid amount of inefficiencies and hassle with their desire to save a buck at the cost of everyone else.
I think American Airlines's marketing and legal teams dropped the ball as far as how they impressed the court of public opinion, as demonstrated by this very thread. "We couldn't make more money" will almost never speak to the common man.
But speaking as someone who's familiar with the aviation industry and flies very often, shenanigans like this cause tremendous losses of time and money when margins are razor thin.
A missing passenger means lost time trying to find that passenger which leads to flight delays. Once a passenger is deemed missing, their checked luggage if any needs to be offloaded which causes additional checks of the flight manifest and the cargo bay, leading to even more lost time and flight delays.
A seat unoccupied-but-occupied means that seat couldn't have been used to deadhead the crew for another flight, which can include crews from other airlines. This makes scheduling logistics even harder than it needed to be, leading to inefficiencies and in the worst case flight cancellations.
This all causes problems for people on the ground: The ground crew at the airports, the flight crew on the plane, the logistics team scheduling everything, and more. It's not just middle management that everyone here likes to flip off.
Also a coup de grace for the audience here: Someone skiplagging means the airline flies an empty seat that should have been occupied, wasting fuel. Skiplagging is bad for the environment.
I am very happy American Airlines won this, and I will say the same with any other airline. If you want to fly somewhere, buy a ticket specifically for that. If you engage in skiplagging, you are sincerely a greedy fucking bastard and deserve every blacklisting you get.
Nobody who is skiplagging is checking bags. If someone is a no-show the plane should not be held back to wait for them. The ground crew can call out their name a few times but when it is time to leave close the doors and leave.
The part about skipplagging causing scheduling issues for deadhead is irrelevant as it doesn’t actually cause scheduling issues, the crew will deadhead on the path they were always planned to do and skiplagging does not affect that.
Airlines could make these problems go away if they charged a consistent fee for each hop, but they decide to instead hang super shitty itineraries over your head hoping you will shell out more money so you don’t have to sleep on a bench in JFK.
Maybe air travel should be treated like a utility where you pay for transit between locations and the airlines need to offer a fixed cost for those transits. The prices can of course fluxuate based upon demand and other external factors like fuel prices, wages. But the airline should not be able to charge different prices based upon where you are coming from and where you are going, or what IP address you bought the tickets from, or your nationality, etc.
I understand that this will most likely make multi hop travel more expensive and single hop travel less expensive, and I think that is a worthwhile tradeoff.
Speaking of the environment, imagine if people could take single hop flights more often because they are cheaper than shittier multi hop itineraries. Right now people will take routes which are much less fuel efficient and much worse for the environment because the tickets are cheaper.
I get your point. I've watched the enlightening presentation given at MIT by an airline economist where he explains that for any route, there's no single fare that would make the route profitable. To have the convenience of modern air travel, we seemingly have to put up with the pricing games that make it possible.
I've never intentionally skiplagged, but there was one time the first leg of my journey was late, I missed my connection and I was going to be in the airport for 8 or 10 hours to catch my 1 hour flight to my final destination. I decided not to, and instead minimized my misery and bought a ticket for the 3.5 hour train ride home.
If an airline looked at that behavior and blacklisted me for not using the service I paid for, then they are the greedy fucking bastards.
I have skipped a last leg in India when I had a meeting in India during a stop-over. It was cheaper to skip it and fly home via an additional small vacation via Sri Lanka.
How did you find out that you got banned?
>there was one time the first leg of my journey was late, I missed my connection and I was going to be in the airport for 8 or 10 hours to catch my 1 hour flight to my final destination. I decided not to, and instead minimized my misery and bought a ticket for the 3.5 hour train ride home.
Two things:
1. That connection miss is strictly on the airline and they did the best they could to make ends meet. An airline worth their salt will bend backwards to make sure you are made whole as practicality allows if things like delays mess up the plans.
2. If you choose to not take them up on the rebookings, that's fine. You should at least let them know you won't be showing up, though.
“As someone familiar with the aviation industry” you should know people “skiplagging” won’t check bags, which destroys your whole argument since that’s where all the inefficiencies lie.
Now you just have a no-show at the gate (P>50% ? something they’re surely used to handle efficiently) giving them some slack to fly their overbook flight without having to bump anyone. Truly a win-win
>you should know people “skiplagging” won’t check bags
The point is that a no-show still causes hassle, and in this case hassle that didn't have to happen.
Shit happens, if you turn into a no-show due to factors outside your control nobody's gonna be angry. But if you are a deliberate no-show? All because you wanted to shave some cost? Sincerely fuck you.
>that’s where all the inefficiencies lie
No.
Airlines choose these ticketing policies and customers react to them rationally. If the airlines allowed customers to notify them that they won't be taking the final flight without any extra costs, then they wouldn't have to worry about no-shows like this (they could even resell the seat).
The airlines are choosing their pricing mechanisms and can live with the consequences.
>customers react to them rationally
There is nothing rational about maliciously misleading someone in a business transaction.
>If the airlines allowed customers to notify them that they won't be taking the final flight without any extra costs,
You absolutely can: Just walk up to the nearest ticketing counter on your way out the airport and let them know you won't be flying. Simple, done. You might still get blacklisted, but you are presumably okay with the consequences.
> There is nothing rational about maliciously misleading someone in a business transaction.
Honestly at this point I think you're just being purposefully obtuse. Of course it's rational for customers to but a ticket A -> B -> C if they want to fly A -> B and the ticket A -> B -> C is cheaper than the ticket A -> B. What's irrational is for airlines to price their tickets that way.
> You absolutely can: Just walk up to the nearest ticketing counter on your way out the airport and let them know you won't be flying. Simple, done. You might still get blacklisted, but you are presumably okay with the consequences.
Once again you seem to just be willfully obtuse here. Being blacklisted is quite obviously a cost. Passengers being blacklisted means that _rational_ customers doing this won't tell the airline. If the airline didn't want passengers to skip the final leg of their flight without telling them, they could simply allow the customer to notify them without extra costs. They choose blacklisting (or charging to to "change" your ticket to not take the final flight) and this is the result.
I mean I get that you work in the airline industry and hence align your arguments to those that profit the airlines, but you really should accept that the airlines are knowingly creating this environment and that customers are just reacting exactly as you'd expect.
>Of course it's rational
No, it is absolutely not.
Merchants can price their products however they want, and they have no obligation to sell to you. Customers can purchase a product if it suits them, including the price, and they have no obligation to buy from them.
The rational thing to do if buying a ticket from A to B is too expensive is to not buy it, let alone buy a ticket that flies to C.
>Being blacklisted is quite obviously a cost.
Don't break contracts you've signed if you don't want to get penalized.
>Passengers being blacklisted means that _rational_ customers doing this won't tell the airline.
Rational customers will tell the airline that their plans need changing/cancelling. This is just common decency as a human being, my dude.
>If the airline didn't want passengers to skip the final leg of their flight without telling them, they could simply allow the customer to notify them without extra costs. They choose blacklisting (or charging to to "change" your ticket to not take the final flight) and this is the result.
Sure, because airlines (and merchants overall) don't like it when customers try to change the deal on short or no notice. That said, if it's due to outside factors most airlines will try to accomodate you.
If you want to change the deal for unjustifiable personal reasons, of course you will get penalized.
>I mean I get that you work in the airline industry and hence align your arguments to those that profit the airlines,
I'm not, and I'm not sure where you drew that conclusion from. I am familiar with the aviation industry because I have family and friends who work(ed) in it (pilots, ATC, etc.) and I am a very frequent flyer myself.
>you really should accept that the airlines are knowingly creating this environment and that customers are just reacting exactly as you'd expect.
Most customers by and large are reasonable, they buy tickets that take them to their desired destination and the airline honors it. It's not a super power to be a decent human and conduct yourself professionally.
>> I don't understand how someone can be barred from an airline because they got a better deal on it.
> Because they cause a truly stupid amount of inefficiencies and hassle with their desire to save a buck at the cost of everyone else.
This is almost entirely self-inflicted. If the airlines stopped treating people who attempt to cancel a single leg of an itinerary like borderline criminals and instead actually gave an incentive (even a small one) to cancel in advance, this problem would mostly go away.
Seriously, I’ve replaced a leg in the middle of a trip with ground transportation due to a delay, and, if I try to call the airline and tell them I’ll be missing that leg, I (a) get yelled at, (b) am threatened with cancellation of the next leg, and (c) have a heck of a time getting the airline not to follow through with (b).
If I were flying a hidden city route under these terms, I would fully understand the desire to simply no-show.
If I were involved in making regulation, I wound seriously consider requiring airlines to allow passengers to cancel single legs, with one hour notice, without penalty. Let the airlines figure out how to make it work. Charge $200 to reroute bags if needed. And, damn it, require the airline to give a partial refund if the passenger is skipping a leg because it was late (or because the previous leg was late).
Here's an idea: the airline could, you know, charge the price that the skiplagged flight would cost?
If this is impacting their margins so dearly, they should incentivize for optimizing against it: nobody would ever take a skiplagged flight if there were no pricing penalty.
> If you engage in skiplagging, you are sincerely a greedy fucking bastard
But the airline isn't greedy for this type of pricing, right?
Skipping a queue in traffic is an asshole thing to do, but we in a society give them the benefit of the doubt because we don't know what they're going through. It inconveniences literally everyone, yet it would be weird for the driver to be blocked from that road for doing so.
We shouldn't accept arbitrary restrictions from stupid megacorps.
I studied Aviation engineering with Pilot studies and am also a frequent flyer, idgaf if someone skiplags.
If a seat on a plane is empty it literally doesn't make a difference to my life as my ass is on another seat. If the empty seat is next to mine then actually that's amazing.
> This all causes problems for people on the ground
As much as delayed connection or missing passenger, they're trained to do this and it's their job to do so. They're not especially annoyed or insulted if it's due to skiplags. Also your assumption is that the person skiplagging checked in baggage which is beyond idiotic to do and to assume.
> logistics team scheduling
ops doesn't sit there and cry waiting for 1 single skiplagger with no checked bags. You know what the solution to this is actually? The airlines to allow it so then they are informed of no-shows beforehand. Simple.
> means the airline flies an empty seat that should have been occupied, wasting fuel
As I said before, if airlines allowed people to be open about their intentions to skiplag then that can be taken into account during W&B. Also 1 or 2 people skiplagging doesn't make a significant dent in fuel burn throughout the flight. Wait till you learn about how aircraft have enough fuel on board to divert - further wasting fuel!! Safety factors are destroying the environment!
> If you engage in skiplagging, you are sincerely a greedy fucking bastard and deserve every blacklisting you get.
Have you considered that people may have legitimate reasons to skiplag? i.e they cannot afford the full fare, they cannot make the following flight for other reasons?
Skip laggers are not uniquely annoying pax, most of your complaints can be made of people who fly for cheap using points - probably an even more collective nuisance. Being on a megacorps side against consumers is strange behaviour.
>legitimate reasons to skiplag? i.e they cannot afford the full fare,
Air travel is a privilege, not a right. If you can't afford a ticket, don't fucking buy it.
>they cannot make the following flight for other reasons?
Sure, but that's not skiplagging.
>Being on a megacorps side against consumers is strange behaviour.
I am siding with common decency. If you lie in the course of business just to save some pretty pennies, costing everyone else in the process, you are a scumbag and you deserve whatever comes your way.
If skiplagging becomes more common, airlines will ultimately raise prices for everyone to make up for the inefficiency and everyone loses. Screw that noise.
> Air travel is a privilege, not a right. If you can't afford a ticket, don't fucking buy it.
They did buy the ticket. Legally.
> Sure, but that's not skiplagging.
That literally is the same as skiplagging. Skiplagging is only determined on intentions, not actions as it is the same action.
> If skiplagging becomes more common, airlines will ultimately raise prices for everyone to make up for the inefficiency and everyone loses. Screw that noise.
You should be more mad about people flying for cheap with credit card points, that literally DOES raise prices for everyone. But I'm sure you do that all the time so it magically makes it okay.
>They did buy the ticket. Legally.
Yes, that ticket is a binding contract for both sides.
If you sign a contract fully aware you don't intend to honor it, you are an asshole.
>Skiplagging is only determined on intentions,
...Yes?
I'm not sure if you're being daft. It is skiplagging to buy something with the intent to not honor the deal, it is not skiplagging if you cannot honor the deal due to factors outside your control.
>You should be more mad about people flying for cheap with credit card points, that literally DOES raise prices for everyone.
The airlines receive compensation from the banks so it's a non-issue.
> I'm not sure if you're being daft
Not surprised, you wouldn't be able to recognize daft if it were staring at you through the mirror.
> The airlines receive compensation from the banks so it's a non-issue.
Yeah bro the banks give out credit card points out of the kindness of their hearts, it's not like they charge merchants fees to make up for it which then get paid for by everyone in society because some cheap bozos think they're mining free amex points sitting in business class having not actually paid for it.
> If skiplagging becomes more common, airlines will ultimately raise prices for everyone to make up for the inefficiency and everyone loses. Screw that noise.
How would everyone lose? Bans against skiplagging allow airlines to divorce their ticket prices from the costs of the underlying service. If airlines were say not allowed to ban skiplagging, they would be forced to price their tickets more in line with the underlying costs (on competitive routes anyway) so we should expect some routes' ticket costs to decrease.
How about we jail airline executives and fine airlines for overselling flights, forcing people to give up their seats, banning people for skiplagging, kicking people off based on clothing, etc. If they can be so arbitrary and refuse passengers, we should just revoke their license to operate.
I am on the airlines side really. They set the fare from A to B.
If you start have people skipping they can no longer offer the competitive fares. The solution could be fines for doing it as a general principle.
They also may cause delays due to final calls, security and manifest checks etc.
I implore you to explain how deplaning means they can’t be competitive.
If I jump out of the airplane halfway through a flight, how does that change their pricing beyond me saving them fuel?
The only way this makes sense is a segment rebate scheme for flights to underserved communities. But I don’t think this is what’s at play here because it’s not mentioned at all.
Half of HN works in SaaS or similar but it seems I need to explain.
Price discrimination is a selling strategy that charges customers different prices for the same product or service based on what the seller believes it can get the customer to agree to. In pure price discrimination, the seller charges each customer the maximum price they will pay. In more common forms of price discrimination, the seller segments customers into groups based on certain attributes and charges each group a different price.
Airlines famously work on razor thin margins. If they dont make their $ this way they need to charge more for the NYC full fare, and because all competitors do it it pushes those fares up. Which might be OK but what this means is skippers make it worse for people who legit follow the terms and conditions
My belief is people should honour the terms of the fare they paid for.
As for a parachute. That is silly. Of course that would add a lot of cost. A similar example is asking a bus driver to stop outside your house. Or let you jump out the open door. Lots of insurance and liability reasons not to do so.
The fact that fuel is the only aspect to a fare is obviously misinformed. It is like saying AWS only pay for data centre electricity.
You’re really struggling to explain here because you know it doesn’t make sense. It has nothing to do with price discrimination because the airline collected the fare either way.
If I offered pizza and a drink for $2 or just pizza for $5 and someone buys the former and chucks the drink, that is not their problem, it’s mine for being an idiot.
I didn’t say anything about a parachute. Don’t be dense.
Shouldn't be the opposite? If a route goes ABC, they'd have to sell AB and BC separately instead of bundled? No more "skipping" and any trip that's not direct can freely be assembled from legs on any airline?
That would save lot of money for airlines. After all if the AB and BC is properly treated as legally separate products. Then responsibility of getting to BC with AB even if the AB is delayed would be fully on customer. Too bad we were late, now pay the full fare for BC again. As you failed to show up.
I'm not sure that's the case, "offering competitive fares" implies that they are trying to charge less, however no business is going to sue for their right to charge less money. They want to charge more, and are using the legal system to help achieve that end.