United Airlines sues 22-year-old who found way to get cheaper plane tickets

Authored by q13fox.com and submitted by Hatewrecked

× United Airlines sues 22-year-old who found way to get cheaper plane tickets

NEW YORK — A young computer whiz from New York City has launched a site to help people buy cheap plane tickets. But an airline company and its travel partner want to shut him down.

United Airlines and Orbitz filed a civil lawsuit last month against 22-year-old Aktarer Zaman, who founded the website Skiplagged.com last year.

The site helps travelers find cheap flights by using a strategy called “hidden city” ticketing.

The idea is that you buy an airline ticket that has a layover at your actual destination. Say you want to fly from New York to San Francisco — you actually book a flight from New York to Lake Tahoe with a layover in San Francisco and get off there, without bothering to take the last leg of the flight.

Related: Airlines get $1 billion from baggage fees

This travel strategy only works if you book a one-way flight with no checked bags (they would have landed in Lake Tahoe).

It’s not like these tickets are the cheapest all the time, but they often are.

In the lawsuit, United and Orbitz call Skiplagged “unfair competition” and allege that it is promoting “strictly prohibited” travel. They want to recoup $75,000 in lost revenue from Zaman.

Zaman said he knew a lawsuit was inevitable but he points out that there’s nothing illegal about his website.

He also said he has made no profit via the website and that all he’s done is help travelers get the best prices by exposing an “inefficiency” in airline prices that insiders have known about for decades.

“[Hidden city ticketing] have been around for a while, it just hasn’t been very accessible to consumers,” Zaman told CNNMoney.

Indeed, “hidden city,” ticketing is no secret among frequent fliers, said Michael Boyd, President of Boyd Group International, an aviation consulting firm in Evergreen, Colo. Boyd worked as an American Airline ticket agent 30 years ago, and says he was trained at the airline to help customers find “hidden city” fares.

“I don’t think it’s illegal what he’s doing,” Boyd said. But lawsuits are expensive and it could end up costing the young entrepreneur who has irked the two billion dollar corporations.

Airlines usually offer cheaper fares for some destinations that are not regional hubs, Boyd said. Many of these flights are routed through more popular destinations. But if a lot of people take advantage of that discrepancy it could hurt the airlines, which is why they want to shut him down.

Patsfan618 on April 10th, 2017 at 21:49 UTC »

I believe what he did was found a way to book a longer flight with a layover in the city you'd like to go. As long as you had no bags you just leave the airport, miss your next flight and you're there.

Thandius on April 10th, 2017 at 21:06 UTC »

If I remember correctly they found in his favor...

MrRichyy on April 10th, 2017 at 20:12 UTC »

I do remember when this happened. And I still use his site!