United & Orbitz Sue Skiplagged Over “Hidden City” Fares
Jeff Edwards November 20, 2014
United and Orbitz have filed suit in federal court seeking to stop New York-based Skiplagged from publishing and purchasing so-called “hidden city” fares in violation of both companies’ rules.
United Airlines and Orbitz are suing Aktarer Zaman and the travel site he operates, Skiplagged, for publishing “hidden city” fares for United flights on the site and using Orbitz to purchase the tickets.
The lawsuit, filed on Monday in federal court in Chicago, refers to hidden-city fares as an “abusive ticketing practice.” In the filing, United and Orbitz defined hidden-city ticketing in its simplest form as when “a passenger purchases a ticket from City A to City B to City C, but does not travel beyond City B.”
Most U.S. airlines prohibit such schemes, but the practice can be attractive to passengers in situations where the price of a ticket is cheaper from City A to City C than from City A to City B.
U.S. airlines have taken steps to discourage hidden-city, or “skipped leg,” schemes in the past. Some airlines promise to cancel return tickets if a flight segment is skipped on the initial outbound flight, and frequent flyers sometimes have their accounts frozen or miles stripped if the airline deems they abused the ticketing system in such a manner. American Airlines even has a boilerplate warning letter for suspected hidden-city flyers that compares this ticket-buying tactic to “switching price tags to obtain a lower price on goods sold at department stores.”
While purchasing hidden-city fares does not violate U.S. law, the lawsuit filed by United and Orbitz contends that Skiplagged’s actions violate a contractual agreement between United and Orbitz. The lawsuit goes on to accuse Skiplagged of breaking several promises to stop publishing proprietary flight and ticket information provided by United and Orbitz. The plaintiffs are seeking a court order halting the conduct.
[Photo: United Airlines]
Congratulations United and Orbitz. I hope you loose your case and your idiocy has The Barbara Streisand Effect for Skiplagged and drives traffic to Skiplagged web site. The Streisand effect occurred after a photographer took a photo of her home on the California Coast. Before Streisand filed her lawsuit, "Image 3850" had been downloaded from Adelman's website only six times; two of those downloads were by Streisand's attorneys.[8] As a result of the case, public knowledge of the picture increased substantially; more than 420,000 people visited the site over the following month
+1. Kudos to Skiplagged for exposing the airlines' abusive monopolistic pricing practices. Regardless of who wins in court, and I realize the deck is stacked against Skiplagged, this case will hopefully generate some mainstream media coverage of fortress hub pricing.
I haven't seen anyone promoting them until now. They must be causing a stir in the bookings.
Awesome. UA has given Skiplagged free publicity. I will explore using this service.