spin88

If Orbitz was a defendant, jurisdiction would exist in Chicago against them. But it would not effect Skiplegged, there still would not be juridiction against them.

It is not unusual to have situations where you have two defendants, but can't sue them both in the same place.

jmanca

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/commen..._for_creating/

/looks like their site is getting hammered...

fireflash

Are United going to file again in the correct jurisdiction?

LaserSailor

Interesting post on the blog of someone claiming to have been banned form AS for two HCT. Shill maybe?

aCavalierInCoach

Seems possible but as the founder alludes to in the thread, UA called a lot of attention to the practice among consumers with the suit in the first place and has lost its partner in the suit (Orbitz). My guess is their time / money is better spent ferreting out those who employ the practice versus suing a site that assists them.

pruss2ny

http://fox2now.com/2015/12/31/how-a-...ited-airlines/

I remember there has been a thread on this...but wondering, since pretty much every transaction is handled with a credit card, what really stops UAL from retroactively charging the card on file for the flight taken, after passenger doesn't complete the flight originally booked?

Kacee

They have the ability to do that. Which they have done in assessing spurious award cancellation fees and repricing upgrades for much higher than what was quoted to the customer. But it's not an authorized charge and a credit card dispute on that basis should be successful.

mherdeg

This certainly happens for trips booked by travel agencies, but instead of charging the credit card they issue a 'debit memo'.

A debit memo is basically a letter saying : hey, you have been booking a lot of hidden-city fares for your travelers; we calculated that the price of the trips they actually took is $1000 higher; please pay us $1000 or we'll cut off your ability to sell more United tickets to your passengers.

In principle if a consumer skips the last leg of a trip, an airline could refare the ticket and charge the new price. British Airways has actually threatened to do this, citing a surge in business-class bookings like AMS-LHR-CTU/CTU-LHR-AMS with lots of people dropping the last leg LHR-AMS (ex-LHR r/t fares are much more expensive); I don't think they've done it yet. The airline can also cancel the customer's frequent-flyer account or refuse their future travel.

On a small basis, hidden-city travel by individual customers is generally thought not to merit the same kind of hands-on attention by UA's revenue protection unit. Aktarer's web site is very interesting and assuming it keeps operating, it is likely to shift travel booking patterns — although not in a way that's good for individual consumers. Either they'll crack down on hidden-city ticketing (and we get a Yapta-style situation where everyone loses) or (very unlikely) they'll make hidden-city booking okay (and business travel gets cheaper, leisure travel gets more expensive).

Kacee

I think that would be problematic legally.

They could sue the passenger for the fare differential, but I think that just charging the credit card for the difference would constitute an unauthorized charge.

Often1

Which is why it's easier just to zero out and close the passenger's FFP account. While it's certainly true that not every passenger has an account or status, the carriers may not care about the guy who does it infrequently and the guy who does it frequently likely wants the miles and the perks of status such as they are.

I don't think that there is even a remote problem in issuing a debit against a CC and I don't think that the CC issuers would sustain a chargeback dispute with the proper backup provided. But, the bigger picture customer service issue makes that one tougher.

FlyWorld

http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/31/inve...ited-airlines/

"United and Orbitz were livid about Skiplagged, calling the start up website "unfair competition" that promoted "strictly prohibited" travel. They filed a federal lawsuit and demanded Zaman pay them $75,000 in lost revenue."

"In February, Orbitz backed out of the case and settled with Zaman, but United kept pursuing it. In May, a judge in Chicago dismissed the case because Skiplagged wasn't in his jurisdiction. United didn't pursue further legal action."

"Zaman says he and his lawyers realized early on that United's case was flawed. United claimed Zaman broke the "contract of carriage," but that's a contract between passengers and airlines -- not third parties like Skiplagged.
United sued Zaman in a court in Illinois, where it is based. Skiplagged is in New York. Ultimately, that technicality helped get the case thrown out."

pinniped

I don't know the legality, but I suspect that would get messy quickly from a PR perspective.

Airlines don't want to attract *that* much attention to the monopolistic grip they hold over their fortress hubs. I suspect they're content to use the hammers they do have - cutting off travel agents and freezing FF accounts - more than going to court with people.

The mainstream media isn't going to go wild and write stories about frozen FF accounts. But if United is charging credit cards for missing flights, that's another animal. That becomes a Comcast-quality story. They'll find someone's grandma who skipped a DTW-GRR flight because somebody came to Detroit to give her a ride home and make her the media equivalent of the grandma who got sued for millions of dollars by the RIAA.

sethb

If I thought that might happen (and I was doing hidden-city ticketing), I'd use a credit card they couldn't re-charge: either a gift card without more money on it, or a single-use number.