What Is 'Skiplagging' and Why Airlines Hate the Booking Practice
Sky-high airfare has travelers turning to travel hacks like "skiplagging" to find cheaper tickets.
This means booking a flight with a layover at the intended destination and skipping the second leg.
The practice is sometimes cheaper than booking a regular nonstop flight, but airlines hate it.
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The post-pandemic travel bug has people flocking to destinations far and wide — but getting where you want to go isn't cheap and some flyers are turning to a cost-saving strategy known as "skiplagging."
Skiplagging — also referred to as "hidden city" or "throwaway" ticketing — involves booking a flight with a layover in the intended destination city, and then bailing on the second leg of the journey.
Travelers can save hundreds on tickets, which is particularly enticing as expensive fares fuelled by a combination of inflation, rising fuel costs, and strong post-pandemic demand continue to plague the industry.
For example, a roundtrip flight from New York to Amsterdam in late June on the Dutch flag carrier KLM costs about $2,850.
However, manipulating the booking by setting the outbound destination as London instead of Amsterdam brings the roundtrip price down to about $2,150.
Google Flights
The return flight is still nonstop out of Amsterdam, so hypothetically one could skip the second leg of the journey to London and stay in the Netherlands instead.
In some cases, people will book the return leg separately if it's cheaper — or travelers will eventually make their way to the original itinerary's destination and try to catch the scheduled return from there.
The flight-booking website Skiplagged.com has built a business around the concept by providing a platform that alerts travelers to these deals based on their preferred airport and destination.
The company only allows one-way tickets though — which can be many times more expensive than booking a roundtrip skiplagged itinerary directly through the airlines.
While this strategy may seem like a saving grace post-pandemic, it is not as innocent as it may seem. Airlines actually hate it.
In a January 2021 memo to employees, American Airlines started cracking down on the practice by introducing new tools to flag potential skiplag booking to agents.
"We've always prohibited these types of booking practices," the carrier told TravelPulse at the time.
United Airlines and the travel website Orbitz even teamed up to sue the Skiplagged founder Aktarer Zaman in 2014. The lawsuit accused Zaman of "unfair competition" and "deceptive behavior," saying that his website cost the duo $75,000 in lost revenue.
The case was filed in Illinois, but it was thrown out because the court did not have jurisdiction as Zaman worked and resided in New York City — not Chicago. Skiplagged.com's website said that the practice was "perfectly legal."
"We remain troubled that Mr. Zaman continues to openly encourage customers to violate our contract of carriage by purchasing hidden-city tickets," United told CNN Money in 2015.
Because of the clear disapproval from airlines, the practice is a risk for passengers — especially as carriers have since added written protections against skiplagging in their contracts of carriage.
NerdWallet reported that airlines could punish travelers by canceling the return leg, taking away loyalty miles and elite status, or even banning a customer from booking with the airline again.
Skiplagged.com said that this strategy wouldn't work with checked bags because airlines tagged them to the final destination — and it's unlikely a passenger could convince an agent to just unload the bag in the layover city.
"Booking unusual itineraries could raise red flags, and someone could flag and monitor you while you fly," Henry Harteveldt, a travel analyst and the cofounder of Atmosphere Research Group, told the BBC in 2019. "At some point, you may get a letter or corporate security meeting you at the gate. The airlines' intention is to intimidate and recover what they perceive to be lost revenue."
However, he said this was a self-imposed problem created by airlines.
"I fully understand, as an airline analyst and business person, why airlines extract as much as they can where they have leverage. That is what business is all about," Harteveldt told the BCC. "But when an airline puts out stupid airline pricing and the fare into a hub [airport] is nonsensically high, it is almost like airlines invite hidden-city booking."
Source: Business Insider
