Darlox

While I acknowledge your overall point about potentially negative consequences for the traveling public as a whole, in general, I'm not sure I can agree with your premise here.

Most BBBs where hidden-city ticketing would bear significant fruit are not tiny hamlets where the airlines offer low prices to be nice guys to the local community. Hidden-city takes advantage of competition as much (or more) than direct routes do. ie. CLE-IAH-LAX is cheaper than CLE-IAH. Or especially certain overseas flights like ORD-CDG-DXB being cheaper than ORD-CDG.

So while your premise may in fact occur in limited circumstances, the demise of hidden-city ticketing has far deeper consequences for the hub-and-spoke model of airline management than it does for a few small towns. I think it's far more likely that the airlines will simply go back to a model of making one-way tickets vastly more expensive than round-trips, if they're forced to close the hidden-city loophole by massive over-use.

pinniped

If I understand you correctly, you're suggesting that the large margins gained on via predatory pricing to fortress hubs help subsidize narrower margins where the airline is forced to compete. Perhaps you are correct...but wouldn't we generally hold that the problem lies in the lack of competition to begin with, and that chipping away at some of the monopoly power where possible is still a noble goal?

My city is a "spoke" for every airline...I suppose I'd stand to lose a flight or two if what you propose is true. But I'd still think it's a worthy fight.

(To be honest, I'm not sure if the magnitude of all of this really would affect service offerings too much. Hidden-city has other practical constraints, and this has to be a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of all air traffic on a given day.)

papabear

The Telegraph has an article on this today:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/tr...-loophole.html

gqZJzU4vusf0Z2,$d7

> can United "take legal action" against me?

Certainly. Anyone can sue you. For pretty much anything. At anytime. It costs real money to defend against even an "obviously" nutty lawsuit.

UAL doesn't have to win. They can simply bankrupt him buying a defense.

Example:

Many years ago I booked two [2] nested trips:
DTW-MCO-DTW; while at MCO ...
MCO-DFW-MCO

I paid for and flew every segment. Yet that didn't stop Delta's "Revenue Protection" thugs from demanding another ~$175 citing the cost of a single ticket:trip (DTW-MCO-DFW-MCO-DTW).

tassojunior

All the British papers today have big stories on this:

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30634144

mahasamatman

Not necessarily.

tassojunior

The only harm I could see is possible flight delays looking for non-show connectors. Especially on direct flights.

mahasamatman

The harm is to the airline's pricing and profit model. And profit trumps all, particularly in a country where corporations have more rights than individuals.

GUWonder

In the interest of freedom, I hope that a site like this one being sued by UA finds a home in a jurisdiction under an arrangement that makes it difficult for companies to suppress information that is publicly available or otherwise discernible using publicly available information.

Do you really know that hidden city ticketing is prohibited by all airlines? You checked out all of them? I doubt it.

Also, just because an airline claims something is prohibited doesn't mean it is necessarily legally prohibited. Some contract elements are unenforceable under some circumstances -- which is why many contracts of adhesion have language that says that the rest of the contract shall still be applicable even if a part of the contract is not lawfully applicable.

787fan

Airlines rarely hold flights for 1 or 2 no-shows, esp if that person isn't top tier status

pinniped

LOL. This little website exposes predatory pricing and the monopolists retort with an "unfair competition" claim?

Now United is just straight up trolling us.

CaptainMiles

Such report would only show quotes by skiplagged for AAA-BBB-CCC and fares charged by UA for AAA-BBB. If would fall very short of proving damages from tickets actually purchased as a result of skiplagged searches, BBB-CCC legs actually skipped from those tickets, and most importantly, whether that same passenger would have purchased the AAA-BBB ticket for the higher AAA-BBB price. To demonstrate the damage, UA would need to have the pax stand and testify that they would have purchased for the higher price. Good luck with that. If even one pax testifies that they would not have purchased at the higher price, then skiplagged will have court testimony that they actually contributed to increased UA's revenue from $0 to the AAA-CCC fare.

787fan

But that's based on the assumption that if UA didn't sell AAA-CCC, that seat would've went out empty, and no one would book the same seat for AAA-BBB-DDD or AAA-BBB-EEE purposes.

CaptainMiles

If AAA-BBB-DDD or AAA-BBB-EEE are non-hub non-predatory pricing, then UA would have made about the same revenue selling AAA-BBB-CCC or AAA-BBB-DDD or AAA-BBB-EEE. Still no damage proven by selling AAA-BBB-CCC versus AAA-BBB-DDD or AAA-BBB-EEE.

starflyer

Does skiplagged actually sell tickets, or just provide free information?