> “Purchasing a ticket to a point beyond the actual destination and getting off the aircraft at the connecting point is unethical,” according to the letter by American, which isn’t party to the case. “It is tantamount to switching price tags to obtain a lower price on goods sold at department stores.”
What in the world? How is that comparison anywhere near remotely justifiable? Absolutely ridiculous.
> American Airlines Group Inc., in a letter to travel agents on its website, suggested it will have to raise fares if it keeps losing money from the practice.
Yes, please do. Price each ticket based on what it costs and a fair margin, not based on competitive meta-market games.
I can only assume that airlines are engaging in potentially unethical pricing themselves. For example, imagine if an airline delivers service from A->C and is low cost. A large competitor airline has no direct route, but flies A->B and B->C, and so offers A->B->C for the same price as the first airline. The route is actually below cost (or has a substantially smaller margin), but the airline offers it anyway to harm its competitor and to keep passengers within its brand. I don't know if I consider this unethical or not, but it's certainly no less ethical than customers taking advantage of hidden city routes for a lower price.
> Price each ticket based on what it costs and a fair margin
That sounds great in theory, but airlines are the textbook example of "what it costs" not making sense. An airplane costs almost the same to fly from New York to San Francisco whether it's completely empty or completely full. The margin cost of fuel for your 150 lbs of body and 50 lbs of luggage is pennies compared to the cost to operate the airplane generally (e.g., a 777-300ER costs about $320 million today, or a lease payment of about $45,000 per DAY [1]... plus depreciation of the engines, maintenance, inspections, flight crew, cabin crew, etc).
How do you divide that up? If you assume 100% capacity on every flight, the airlines will be even broker than they already are (airlines are hardly raking in money: American Airlines filed for bankruptcy in 2011, Delta and Northwest in 2005, US Airways in 2004, United in 2002, and US Airways again in 2002...). [2]
If you assume something in the middle, maybe 70%, then you end up with a silly situation where seats are flying empty even though the airline would be happy to sell then for 50% off and people would be willing to fill them for 50% off.
Then add the fact that first class passengers are willing to subsidize the rest of the cabin... and so are people who need flexible fares, etc.
Airline seats are a lot like software in that there isn't a good way to figure out "charge what it costs." On average, we know the airlines are charging slightly LESS than what it costs to operate an airline. But it's not like gasoline where you can figure out how much it costs to refine a gallon and then charge a small markup.
Probably the same way folks try to justify selling a DVD that only plays on North American DVD players. Generally people substitute the phrase "it isn't fair when ..." when they meant to say "I don't like it when ..."
I expect that the airlines will be unsuccessful in their suit but will get the FAA to approve a fee that would be charged if a passenger did not make the complete flight. In the back rooms they will tell the FAA its for passenger safety, after all its important in an emergency to know who is really on the plane, and people who get off early are putting first responders in harms way as they will go looking for people who aren't actually on the plane. They will argue they need a way to discourage that behavior and one way to do that is to charge a hefty "early exit" fee should a passenger depart the route mid-route. They would of course be open to discussions if it was for a legitimate emergency like you had to get back home or something.
And then there will be a $250 "early exit" fee and this web site will be toast and the airlines will be happy again.
> after all its important in an emergency to know who is really on the plane, and people who get off early are putting first responders in harms way as they will go looking for people who aren't actually on the plane
They generally do a new itinerary for each new flight, so they should know that person X isn't on the flight. Now, I can understand that they'd be annoyed if they were holding the plane knowing that person X had arrived at that airport and should be nearby. But, anybody could simply tell the check in desk they won't be flying on that flight (as a courtesy).
Paying for a flight and not boarding is way more ethical than the Airline selling you a seat that doesn't exist (overselling is super common... ever hear them ask for volunteers to take a later flight in exchange for a voucher? That means they sold seats that didn't exist).
Of course, the airline thinks it's fine when it is pulling the switcheroo but they get pissed when you do it back to them. As long as the FAA allows them to oversell flights, they should allow passengers to use hidden city fare discounts... it's only fare.
This sounds absurd. This is the best analogy i've come up with:
A Sandwich shop sells half sandwiches at 5$ and full sandwiches at 6$
You, and a friend would both like half a sandwich. Instead of ordering two separate halves. You order only 1 full sandwich and cut it in half yourself.
Now the sandwich shop is suing you because you paid $6 for one sandwich, and only ate half of it. That's instead of paying 10$ for two half-sandwiches like the shop would like.
----------
I think if they don't want people to buy a product, then they shouldn't sell it.
Either lower the price of A -> B tickets, or make sure that tickets from A -> B -> C cost no less than A -> B
OR they could ignore this altogether and continue to sell A-B tickets at a premium realizing that people will only buy them for convenience.
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 feel like these analogy threads are HN users way of getting around the no-fun policy of commenting on HN.
Someone writes a comment using an analogy and almost always there are people de-constructing the analogy and then creating their own "improved" version that take more facts into account making it harder to understand the situation which is the exact opposite effect an analogy should have.
The problem with the analogy (as I see it) is that A->B->C may be 'worse than' than A->B (because place C may be undesirable), whereas that isn't true for halves of a sandwich (because it is ok to not eat the second half of a sandwich).
Oh, and the airlines sell you the full sandwich for $3, but the half sandwich for $5.
It doesn't make a lot of sense, but it's the airlines right to set their prices and try to defend them; they may succeed or they may not. I doubt this particular lawsuit will be the test case that breaks them.
I wonder. Do you sign any agreement that prohibits hidden city routing when you buy the ticket? If so, on an ethical level, it's not the same as the sandwich buying scenario, where you are not signing any additional agreement.
I wonder what I would do if I were the airline. Obviously the simplest thing would be to suspend the return ticket, but I suppose that the return ticket would typically be booked on a different airline. Another option would be to collaborate with other airlines to suspend return tickets, but I suppose that would be collusion and wouldn't fly with regulators. You could also try a prisoner's dilemma-y thing where future sales to a customer that has hidden city-routed in the past are marked up to fix the difference. If all airlines did this then only infrequent flyers would be able to hidden-city route. But if any airline refuses to participate, it might be tough for the business of the airlines that engaged in this practice.
Tough situation for the airlines. Not that I have too much sympathy, but I do take it into perspective that travelling is historically extremely cheap. It's a great time to be a flyer.
Do you sign any agreement that prohibits only eating one half of a sandwich? Would any such agreement be reasonable if buried in a dense online ordering click-wrap?
Reasonable . . . hrm. Hard to say. The surface area of duties and rights associated with an airline ticket in particular and airline travel in general are so vast that some level of clickwrap is unavoidable, not to mention the various laws that cover the industry.
Comparatively, the duties and rights regarding a physical good like a sandwich are fairly simple -- it behaves like most simple physical goods. You buy it, then you can do what you want with it. Airline tickets are unlike this in a variety of ways. Hidden city routing being prohibited would not, I feel, be qualitatively different than many of these other restrictions.
I buy a sandwich; I can eat all of it or some of it.
I buy airplane seats; I can sit in both seats or just one. If they don't like which seats I chose to sit in or not, they shouldn't have sold the ticket to me in the first place.
They're not really "selling you tickets" on specific flights. They're selling you the service of hauling you from from your starting point to your destination - possibly on the route planned, or possibly on other routes. This includes such things as sending you on another airline, or on a train, or putting you up in a hotel room.
I think the airlines would be willing to ignore a handful of people skipping out on a leg here or there. Pricing is obviously a major issue, but I think even moreso than that, if this were to become a common/well accepted way of buying tickets, there are serious issues in case of cancellations/delays/missed connections that, while fine in the hands of those who know they're subjecting themselves to the risk of being stranded, would lead to a bunch of "I bought a ticket to Chicago and United is going to leave me in Nantucket unless I buy a second ticket" news stories in case of a snowstorm.
> They're not really "selling you tickets" on specific flights.
They really are.
Coca-cola are marketing a refreshing tasty sparkling beverage, but what they're actually selling is carbonated water with sugar and acid. If I use it to clean my driveway, that's my prerogative, and Coca-cola don't get to retroactively charge me more because driveway cleaning chemicals are a more profitable market.
Funny that you bring that up, because that's actually happened! (Almost.) It's why alcohol-for-drinking is more expensive than alcohol-for-cleaning.
The government wanted to tax people it they drink it but not if they just clean with it. But then people (well, alcoholics mainly) realized they could buy the untaxed one "for cleaning" but then turn around and drink it. Can't have that!
End result: denatured alcohol, which (given taxes) is cheaper than the drinking kind because they "yuck it up" to the point that you can't drink it.
I just hope they don't do the analogous thing here, which would be like "poison you and hold the antidote at the ticket's final location" :-O
The problem with analogies is that just because you can make two things sound similar does not mean they are.
The statement you made about airline tickets is normative, not descriptive. I'm curious about how things actually are, not how people on HN want them to be.
Yes, you agree for both the fare rules of the specific ticket you bought and the airline's contract of carriage, both of which are approved by the Department of Transportation. And (at least) the CoC prohibits hidden-city ticketing.
As you can see, hidden city routing is prohibited, and they retain the right to assess the difference between the ticket you actually used and what you paid if you engage in the practice.
The problem is that travel is a bit more complicated than sandwiches -- flight prices end up being set more by competition rather than cost of production. Let's say, per your model, you offering flights from SFO to PDX for $200, LAX to SFO for $100, and sell the LAX->PDX route for $250 (with a stopover in SFO). I decide to start an airline which doesn't fly to SFO, but offers direct flights from LAX->PDX for $190. You don't want to lose the business of people flying from LAX->PDX, but also don't want to alter your routes. Any thoughts?
You are right that air travel is more complicated than sandwiches, but does it matter? What law or contract has skiplagged broken? Bad business models are not fundamental rights.
I haven't looked into the actual legal details of this case, but in most jurisdictions it is a tort (i.e.l illegal) to interfere with others' business contracts. It's a notoriously tricky area of law though, and the source of a lot of borderline frivolous lawsuits. There are also numerous exceptions.
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.
My concern is that a passenger might buy a ticket through skiplagged, and not understand that they risk getting banned from the airline. If you live near a one-airline airport, that's a pretty serious risk.
I think "getting banned" is far less of a risk-by-way-of-misunderstanding than "the airline isn't compelled to deliver you where you want to go". When I've bought ticket A->B->C, my actual travel has included routes such as: A->C, A->D->C, A->D->E->C, A->D-(train)-C, A-(Cab)-A'->C.
I've been all worked up about this story since I first read it, but yours is the first comment to make me actually understand a potential, non-bullshit argument from the airline side of things. Thank you.
That said, I think I'm still grumpy at the airlines for doing it. The basic issue they're trying to resolve is that they want the LAX-SFO-PDX flight to compete only with the other airlines' LAX-PDX direct flights, which justifies their weird pricing.
In reality, though, their LAX-SFO-PDX flight is also competing with their own LAX-SFO flights, because, unless they're locking people in the planes, they're equivalent products for anybody trying to get to SFO.
You're saying "You don't want to lose the business of people flying from LAX->PDX, but also don't want to alter your routes," which makes sense as a business. But as a consumer, it seems pretty screwed up that "I don't want to change my routes" is enough of a reason for businesses to sue people and businesses who take advantage of your refusal to fly where they want to go. It's using litigation instead of just flying to PDX.
LAX->SFO->PDX isn't an equivalent product if you're going to SFO -- the airline can rebook you on any of a number of options (in case of weather, capacity, mechanical difficulties or whatnot) that may or may not go through SFO.
Adjusting routing is nontrivial. Planes are expensive. Gate rental is expensive. Pilots are expensive. Getting pilots and planes to where people are with routes planned to haul them to where they want to be is complicated. As an example of how complicated (and fragile) this is, watch the United departure board when there's a decent storm brewing in Chicago -- It's not just the flights going into and out of ORD that get screwed up -- it's pretty much every flight in the country.
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.
Airline economics are a bit complicated. What exactly constitutes "below costs"? Let's say I have a plane flying from A->B that is typically 90% full, and a plane flying from B->C that is typically 90% full. You want to get from A to C. The cost on my end for doing this is already a sunk cost - I can carry you for a very small marginal cost. If someone else is willing to do it for $200, I'll do it for $190 (Hell - I'm willing to go very cheap - maybe even $50), because getting something for those seats is better than getting nothing.
What I don't want to do is to let someone else's fare on route A->C cause me to lower the price for people who want to fly from A->B (whose alternative is to pay $250).
> eventually you have to directly fight against the rights of your passengers
The airlines have already fought and won this battle. Airlines contracts of carriage already prohibit hidden city ticketing.
We should also consider the possibility that the profits from, e.g., an the LAX->SFO->PDX and LAX->SFO routes are not sufficient to cover expenses if you impose the external requirement that the former must always be more expensive than the latter. Maybe, under these constraints, people decide there are better things to invest their money in than setting up these airline routes, or maybe they replace these two routes with a single, direct LAX-PDX route, and nobody gets to fly to SFO.
True, but there are going to be other carriers on each leg -- presumably, some who don't carry on to the same cities after landing. That should keep there from being significant profits to be had on overcharging so severely for individual legs of the route.
Great explanation, thanks! Still not convinced though. In a sane world, you don't violate the generalized triangle inequality. In this case, the first airline should see an equal drop in demand for the two legs and cut prices to fill the gap (draw the marginal traveler for either or for both legs).
Having a special "both legs only" deal, in the face of higher actual costs for both than for only one, should immediately reveal itself as stupid, though an airline may (foolishly) be trying to kill its competitor.
Yet another analogy: the first business makes a template for cutting cookie shape A and a second for shape B. The second business sees demand for people who need an equal amount of both cookies, and makes a special template that "stamps out" an A and B stuck together. The one template is cheaper than two. Now it can sell the A/B bundle cheaper than the first business.
Some people like having separate cookies, some don't, and some only want one of them. Some like having both and don't mind breaking the fused one. The second business sells the fused one cheaper.
How should the first react? What if it tried to steal the "A/B bundle market" by trying to offer a major discount for people who buy A and B together, but only if they really like both?
The airlines aren't suing passengers though, they are suing Skiplagged. Whether or not you agree with the way that airlines charge for tickets, the ticket is a contract between the passenger and the airline and breaking that contract has consequences.
For the passenger, the contracts say that you are expected to use all legs of the tickets and if you do not then the rest of legs of the flights are voided. For the airlines, if they are unable to provide the flight they owe the passenger compensation.
There are no legal repercussions for the passenger not using all legs of the flights, but Skiplagged is clearly committing conspiracy to defraud and I would wager a fair sum of money that they will lose this case.
The issue with the Sandwich analogy is that there is no contract.
> the contracts say that you are expected to use all legs of the tickets
and
> There are no legal repercussions for the passenger not using all legs of the flights
both be true?
In other words, I as the customer have no obligation to use all legs of the flight. I did not promise the airline I would fly all the way to my destination (as far as I know); I do not promise that I even get on the flight at all. How can there be a conspiracy to defraud?
The latter is not true. Airlines' contracts of carriage prohibit "Point Beyond Ticketing." Here is what (e.g.) United's contract of carriage says:
> Fares apply for travel only between the points for which they are published. Tickets may not be purchased and used at fare(s) from an initial departure point on the Ticket which is before the Passenger’s actual point of origin of travel, or to a more distant point(s) than the Passenger’s actual destination being traveled even when the purchase and use of such Tickets would produce a lower fare. This practice is known as “Hidden Cities Ticketing” or “Point Beyond Ticketing” and is prohibited by UA.
And violation of this provision can, in fact, have repercussions:
> UA’s Remedies for Violation(s) of Rules - Where a Ticket is purchased and used in violation of the law, these rules or any fare rule (including Hidden Cities Ticketing, Point Beyond Ticketing, Throwaway Ticketing, or Back-to-Back Ticketing), UA has the right in its sole discretion to take all actions permitted by law, including but not limited to, the following:
> 1) Invalidate the Ticket(s);
> 2) Cancel any remaining portion of the Passenger’s itinerary;
> 3) Confiscate any unused Flight Coupons;
> 4) Refuse to board the Passenger and to carry the Passenger’s baggage, unless the difference between the fare paid and the fare for transportation used is collected prior to boarding;
> 5) Assess the Passenger for the actual value of the Ticket which shall be the difference between the lowest fare applicable to the Passenger’s actual itinerary and the fare actually paid;
> 6) Delete miles in the Passenger’s frequent flyer account (UA’s MileagePlus Program), revoke the Passenger’s Elite status, if any, in the MileagePlus Program, terminate the Passenger’s participation in the MileagePlus Program, or take any other action permitted by the MileagePlus Program Rules in UA’s “MileagePlus Rules;” and
> 7) Take legal action with respect to the Passenger.
> Where a Ticket is purchased and used in violation of the law, these rules or any fare rule (including Hidden Cities Ticketing, Point Beyond Ticketing, Throwaway Ticketing, or Back-to-Back Ticketing)
I did but I interpreted the first clause as a precondition of the following ones. I see now.
It still seems unclear that there are legal ramifications. It simply sets out a list of consequences should you not follow through. I suppose they could attempt to come after you in small claims court if you refused to pay.
In case you missed it, restaurants already do this (well not the suing part) but many will charge extra if you order an entree (main dish) and ask for an extra plate to share it.
This type of purely nuisance punitive lawsuit should wind up biting both Orbitz and the airlines in the ass.
The crucial thing that this website owner must do is keep this story in the media. He will have to make himself available to various news outlets--sometimes on short notice. Of course, he will need to consult with his attorney.
Unless I'm missing something, as long as he can weather the delays, this appears to be a slam dunk.
Ignoring the merits of the lawsuit, I don't see how Skiplagged could ever be a big business. If it succeeds, it will result in its own destruction: the airlines will either eliminate hidden-city ticketing (i.e. reduce the 'hub premium') or otherwise prevent people from doing this (e.g. charge people extra if they don't complete their flight).
I actually thought that airlines have always threatened to 'claw back' the fare difference from travelers that did this, but I may be mistaken.
Many companies trying to enter a market with a big markup (like travel) will do things like this. Find a differentiator, build a user base, and in the end become another comparison booking site that just passes people off to an agency for a big cut.
If you look back in the history of the big and small comparison sites, most started with (if the don't still operate) a gimmick but really are making their margins by being a step in the user's path to buying an airline ticket-- or better, a hotel reservation.
The airlines will go after passengers who abuse hidden-city ticketing but will generally let it slide if you only do it once or twice. There are stories on FlyerTalk about repeat offenders being banned from certain airlines.
It's probably the most frequently asked question on that site.
You're presuming that skiplagged wouldn't then branch into other ticketing angles using all the publicity / usage it acquires prior to losing the original product.
TravelZoo is worth $192 million, and has $158 million in sales. Why couldn't Skiplagged enter that turf with its momentum? (in this hypothetical)
Not every business needs to be big. If they make a profit on a flaw in the system and eventually leave the world a better place as they gracefully shut down operations, win-win.
If only businesses worked with this sort of mindset...we wouldn't be having near the wealth disparity and stagnant wage issues that are plaguing the world these days.
But, they absolutely do not think in these terms...it's "exploit every dollar possible and pay us at the top and our shareholders every penny we scrape, to hell with anyone not like us."
That would be like a casino clawing back estimated losses from a card counter. While the airlines and Orbitz use the word, "prohibited," like card counting it is not actually illegal and only contravenes their ticketing policies.
however, during your search, you would NOT see tickets that go from A-B-C.
why is that relevant? sometimes tickets from A-B-C are cheaper than A-B. so you would buy a ticket (A-B-C) and simply leave the airport of city B (not boarding the B-C flight).
the website in question made it easier to find these types of tickets. These tickets are commonly known as "hidden-city" tickets.
the airlines would prefer you to spend more money on an A-B flight rather than buying the cheaper A-B-C ticket.
they are now suing this website to enforce their preference on consumer choice.
if there were something illegal going on, it would be limited to your individual contractual obligations as the owner of an airline ticket. (there could be a term that requires you to actually be present on the airplane for an A-B-C flight)
This website is simply _enabling_ people who intend to violate this (potential) term of their airline ticket agreement.
> This website is simply _enabling_ people who intend to
> violate this (potential) term of their airline ticket
> agreement.
Which might, in some jurisdictions, open the website operators to claims of tortious interference (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference) if they can prove that the site operator knew about the contractual term and incited people to breach it.
Hopefully a term requiring someone to take a flight is unenforceable (if such a term even exists) - so that might give them a defence even if such a term exists.
> if they can prove that the site operator knew about the contractual term and incited people to breach it.
Notably, the contract didn't yet exist at the time of involvement of the site operator.
At the point of ticket purchase / contractual agreement, the site operator is not involved, and in fact the operator has no knowledge of whether a contract was entered at all.
I think most people have, at some point, chosen between available flights based on layover city. I know I have. So there's a distinct utility offered, separate from any missed connections.
It's very hard for me to imagine a contract that includes "once you get on the plane, you must not miss your connecting flight".
Heck, I wish I could get the airlines to say "once you're on the plane, we will make sure your connecting flight doesn't leave without you", but of course that's impractical.
Very interesting. Mark that as one point for my lack of imagination.
It might be tough to establish that the consumer entered into that contract knowledgeably, but there are a lot of more important terms in that same document -- so the airlines might have some powerful supporters with a vested interest in the validity of those contracts.
Still, tortious interference presumes an existing contract, from my expert legal reading of Wikipedia. If a customer enters the contract with a preexisting intention to breach, I am not sure you can accuse the site operator of interference before the fact.
Interesting. I was under (perhaps mistakenly) the impression that buying a ticket to A-B-C and stopping at B, would result in being charged for the A-B route instead.
Regardless, I always check my baggage so A-B-C type tickets would not work for me.
I've heard and experienced many times that most flights are overbooked by default to compensate passengers that are not showing up. On the other hand this often results in changed seats or even rebookings to other classes (I got an upgrade to Business class "for free") or even other flights.
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.
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.
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.
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.
No, but standby seating is not really something people pursue anymore in this era of cutthroat pricing and overbooking. And then you can only give that seat away at the very last minute, which pretty much guarantees that you will be delaying that plane, with much higher financial consequences for the airline. I think overbooking is a better solution for the airlines.
Regulations, probably, but I also don't think you are allowed to randomly walk around the airport looking for empty seats if you don't have a ticket, and if I have a ticket I'm just going to my gate, since if I am at the airport it means my flight is about to leave anyway.
Can someone explain the harm this causes the airlines? I get there's a bit of an opportunity cost because they'll have an empty seat, but apart from that? I feel there's something more here
I suspect the airlines use an algorithm to maximize the prices the tickets sell for. This will have absolutely nothing to do with how much it actually costs the airline to provide the service. It will instead be based on some crazy mix of supply, demand, competitors prices, time until flight (to allow better prediction) etc.
Some routes will lose money, some will be cash-cows. The algorithm balances it all out for a net profit.
Enter an anti-algorithm that starts mucking with all of the carefully balanced numbers to do an optimization of its own and you end up with very unhappy airlines.
The only thing I can think of is on subsidized flights to places like las vegas. If your destination isn't actually vegas but the supposed end point is, I can see it possibly getting hairy. A bit of a stretch though.
It seems like they use the higher fares to the middle destination to compensate for the higher costs per person of the less popular leg.
It's all a complicated algorithm but they have to provide reasonably reliable flights to all of the destinations that they serve in case someone gets bumped. (or they'll have to pay out huge fines to each passenger.)
I think this relies on the arguably-faulty assumption that ticket prices are based on airlines' costs in delivering the service. Airlines' costs probably set the floor for ticket prices most (but not all) of the time, but don't have much to do with the typical prices. This obvious when you look at the cost of holiday travel: planes don't become twice as expensive to fly because it's Christmas.
What actual determines ticket price is mainly the supply and demand around trips between a pair of destinations (like with any other market). Lots of people want to move between DC and New York, and lots of them are business people who can afford to pay a lot, so the market can support a high price for this city pair. This isn't true of, say, DC and Yonkers. What's key, also, is that the layover cities (setting aside people doing the "hidden city" thing) are largely an implementation detail; if you're going from DC to Yonkers, you're comparing the flights that go through New York to flights that go through Philly directly on price (assuming about equal convenience), and you're going to pick the cheapest one. This means market forces are going to drive these prices to be similar, even if the DC->Philly market is radically different from the DC->NYC market. The consequence is weird, unintuitive situations where a flight to the intermediate city can be more expensive than one to the final destination, if market forces are such that the market can typically support a higher price for flights to that intermediate city than they can to the ultimate destination city. Hidden city travelers take advantage of the cost disparity between the markets -- it's a sort of arbitrage.
In simpler terms, it's textbook price discrimination. For any given route, there are potential customers willing to pay different prices for that route. If the airline offers the maximum price to everyone they lose lots of sales. If they offer the lowest price to everyone, they lose potential revenue from all those people who would have paid more.
I think the failure mode is probably the most serious harm - even more than pricing. What service is the airline contractually / in the court of public opinion obligated to provide you in the case of weather?
While this might be an unpopular opinion but layover or not the passengers are still on the manifest for the final destination.
This means that if they decide to use this method they'll get off at the layover without telling anyone about it. This act alone can will cause delays while the flight crew and the airport staff will try to locate the missing passengers. Additionally depending on the security situation at the time and other conditions such as if it's the same aircraft or not of if they've checked in luggage (intentionally or by misstake since you can always apply for missing luggage and you'll get it delivered to you after a day or 2) this trick can lead to complete off boarding of the aircraft and a secondary security screening of all the passengers and the checked in luggage.
Even if this event will only happen once in a 100 flights it will still cost the airline, the airport, and the people enough time and money for everyone really pissed about this nonsense.
While i agree that the law suit might be slightly out of place, i think there are some good reasons why this practice isn't kosher.
Tho the fact that it's hard or near impossible to buy the same tickets directly without going trough a booking agent that can fix the price for you kinda sucks, i would think that most people would want to kill that guy that made them wait for 2 hours while they got their shit screened again just beause he tried to save 50$...
A smart airline would flag few people that do this and put them in a high-touch queue where the airline confirms if they intend to stay on for the final leg of the flight. If no, the airline modifies the passenger's flight details and makes it an A-B flight, and the seat on the B-C flight is marked available for purchase (maybe at a discount last-minute type price). If Yes, nothing changes. This way the airline can still sell that ticket. Savvy customer is happy with high-touch customer service, airline makes more money.
the only real point they have is that if many people buy A-B-C tickets, their calculations will expect many physical people to be on the B-C flight.
Here is a contrived situation that they might present:
Aircraft are fueled to certain amounts based on the number of passengers they have.
If an airplane takes off from SEA to LAX, it does not want to stop right away and land, minutes after taking off. The landing might be too "hard" since the plane weighs too much. Normally what happens is the plane will either take off with less fuel, or it has to circle around in the air, burning off excess fuel before landing.
If you have an airplane flying from SEA to LAX to DFW, and too many people get out at LAX, and don't make the LAX-DFW flight, then the weight calculations on takeoff and landing at LAX and DFW will be very different.
Now keep in mind in the real world, this probably won't make any difference, since more than 2% of travelers don't do this. Also i have not looked up what kind of weight impact the actual passengers are supposed to have relative to the actual airplane.
Passenger (and luggage) weight makes a huge difference for fuel burn and overall weight. That said, planes that are above maximum landing weight are generally bound for a very distant destination - on an SEA - LAX leg the plane is almost certainly nowhere near full on fuel, it under the maximum landing weight from the start, and can land immediately without a problem.
If it is going for somewhere far away, however, that gives the crew plenty of time to burn extra fuel on the way by operating inefficiently (turning on the APU, flying at inefficient altitudes or airspeeds, etc), and in any case if enough passengers are missing that the fuel burn will change significantly that'd probably push it back down under the landing weight limit.
The whole circling to burn fuel or fuel dumping thing usually happens when the plane has to make an emergency or unexpected landing; here the typical scenario is that the plane is fully loaded with passengers and luggage, and has nearly-full fuel tanks for a long cross-country or international route. Shortly after takeoff, a technical issue is identified, and the plane needs to shed weight before landing to avoid damaging the landing gear and requiring a costly inspection before returning to service.
The other scenario where circling to burn fuel can happen is if there's a wet runway or other such issue that reduces braking performance. Again, though, this is mostly an issue if you have a fully loaded plane ready for a very long route.
Can someone give me some examples where this tool works out well? I live in a hub city (MIA) so I can't seem to find any results in their search (or is their site overloaded?)
Not sure about the tool specifically, but I know that tickets to Charlotte/Atlanta from MIA/FLL are often more expensive than tickets to New York from MIA/FLL, routes which almost always have a layover in Atlanta or Charlotte.
Same. Can't seem to find many flights from a major hub city (ORD). I've just been flipping in new airport codes into the custom URL[1], but haven't gotten anything yet.
I wonder how big of an impact such passengers have on environment. Imagine if half of the people who bought tickets on A->B->C flight decided to stay in B->C. They leave the airline in a position where they can't resell the empty seats, so the jet flies half-full while still using the pretty much the same amount of fuel (the impact of passengers is marginal). If you scale this behaviour up, an airline ends up flying 2x as many B->C flights as needed, thus literally wasting half of the fuel on that route.
I don't think it's very ethical to deliberately introduce inefficiencies to a system for personal gain, especially if it leads to wasting scarce resources. Being a responsible human being means caring about other things than just money.
Also, it's hard for me to feel compassion for passengers exploiting this trick - air travel is totally underpriced already, casual passengers pay much less than they should actually pay to cover the operating costs (not to mention externalities). People complain about algorithmic pricing, but that actually makes air travel affordable for a typical person, where a fixed pricing scheme would not.
> "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, so stepped out" would be something they can't contest.
I understand that as the seller they have the right to refusal passengers but it seems like their combative stance is akin to the music/movie industries attitude towards torrents. I would think that both Orbitz and United would be better off on-boarding an "if you can't beat them, join them" mantra. This whole episode could have been flipped on it's head if the headline read "Skiplagged officially endoresed by United and Orbitz". Imagine the number of passengers they'd attract! I'm assuming that the market for flights is demand elastic to some extent. This is anecdotal based on my own buying pattern though.
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]
So Awesome
Born in Bangladesh, Zaman grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., and graduated with a bachelor's degree in computer science at age 20 from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He lives in Manhattan and works at a technology start-up that he declined to name.
I don't understand. These types of websites have existed for a long time. This is nothing new. Most people have found out that hidden-city ticketing doesn't work either on round-trip flights because the airlines will cancel the rest of the trip if they find out. It only works for one-way trips with carry-on bags only.
What's the appeal of this site? I just did a flight search from SFO to LGB, and fares seem to be generally higher than anything I've found on Google Flights (which is insanely good). I did a search from SFO to Munich, and it can't even find flights.
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
What in the world? How is that comparison anywhere near remotely justifiable? Absolutely ridiculous.
> American Airlines Group Inc., in a letter to travel agents on its website, suggested it will have to raise fares if it keeps losing money from the practice.
Yes, please do. Price each ticket based on what it costs and a fair margin, not based on competitive meta-market games.
I can only assume that airlines are engaging in potentially unethical pricing themselves. For example, imagine if an airline delivers service from A->C and is low cost. A large competitor airline has no direct route, but flies A->B and B->C, and so offers A->B->C for the same price as the first airline. The route is actually below cost (or has a substantially smaller margin), but the airline offers it anyway to harm its competitor and to keep passengers within its brand. I don't know if I consider this unethical or not, but it's certainly no less ethical than customers taking advantage of hidden city routes for a lower price.