Airlines have long been fighting against passengers who book a flight with a transfer in the city to which one is actually traveling. Known as both "skiplagging" and hidden-city ticketing," the travel "hack" is heavily frowned upon by airlines for disrupting plane scheduling networks and creating unfilled flights.
United (UAL) -), Delta (DAL) -) and American Airlines (AAL) -) have all worded prohibitions against the practice into their travel policies and cracked down on passengers who try to do it anyway. The latter airline once booted a passenger who skiplagged 95 flights off its loyalty program.
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Taking things one step further, American Airlines is now also trying to sue the website that helps travelers find such flights. Founded by 20-year-old Aktarer Zaman in 2013, the website has become an incredibly popular way for some to find cheaper fares.
One report shows that skiplagged fares between cities like Los Angeles and Atlanta can be nearly 60% lower than a normally-booked flight while even a PAC connected to former President Donald Trump reported paying $10 in site fees in its financial disclosure forms.
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'Every ticket issued by Skiplagged is at risk of being invalidated,' lawsuit claims
On August 17, American Airlines filed a 37-page U.S. District Court for Northern Texas lawsuit accusing Skiplagged of "deceptive and abusive" marketing that leads travelers to believe they get "access to some kind of secret 'loophole'" while actually charging equivalent or even higher fares than if they had booked directly with the airline.
"Skiplagged deceives the public into believing that, even though it has no authority to form and issue a contract on American's behalf, somehow it can still issue a completely valid ticket," the lawsuit reads. "It cannot. Every 'ticket' issued by Skiplagged is at risk of being invalidated."
The Skiplagged founder, in turn, responded by telling media outlets that the "millions of users who keep coming back clearly speaks for how much value we bring to the travel industry, contrary to American Airlines' claims."
Other airlines have tried to sue over this issue before
While it focused on causing losses to the airline rather than deceiving passengers, German airline Lufthansa (DLAKF) -) once failed to win a lawsuit against a passenger who booked a business class ticket from Oslo to Seattle only to get off at the connection in Frankfurt on the way back home.
After seeing one German court throw out the lawsuit at the end of 2018, Lufthansa moved to appeal before dropping it by February 2019. United and travel-booking platform Orbitz have also tried to sue Skiplaggged in 2013 but a judge ultimately also tossed the lawsuit out.
When it comes to U.S.-based airlines, American has been by far the strictest in cracking down on hidden-city ticketing in recent years. A high-profile incident occurred at the start of July when the airline prevented teenager Logan Parsons from boarding a flight after the check-in agent saw his North Carolina driver's license and suspected that he was using his ticket between Florida's Gainesville and New York City to get off at the Charlotte layover.
Despite the outcry against interrogating and leaving a 17-year-old stranded, the airline doubled down with statements saying that "purchasing a ticket without intending to fly all flights to gain lower fares is a violation of American Airlines terms and conditions."
