United Airlines and and online travel company Orbitz are suing a 22-year-old who founded a website that helps travelers book cheaper flights.
Aktarer Zaman from New York City founded Skiplagged.com, which uses “hidden city” ticketing to provide people with more affordable airfares.
The website allows travelers to purchase a ticket with a layover in the final destination. For instance, if one were flying from Los Angeles to Chicago, a ticket might be purchased from Los Angeles to Indianapolis with a layover in Chicago, and the traveler would not complete the last leg of the trip.The strategy works only for one-way flights with no checked bags, as those bags would end up in the final destination of the booked itinerary rather than at the layover location.
“Skiplagged is a travel website that actually saves consumers money on airfare by exposing pricing inefficiency among other things,” Zaman told RT.
He told CBS News he has not profited from the website.
United and Orbitz are seeking $75,000 in damages in lost revenue from Zaman. The billion-dollar companies say Skiplagged is “unfair competition” and claim that “Zaman has intentionally and maliciously used Skiplagged to damage [their] businesses.”
“In its simplest form, a passenger purchases a ticket from city A to city B to city C but does not travel beyond city B,” the companies’ complaint states. “‘Hidden City’ ticketing is strictly prohibited by most commercial airlines because of logistical and public-safety concerns.”
“Hidden city” ticketing is a strategy that the travel industry has been well aware of for many years.
“This has been a dirty little secret of the travel industry for a really long time,” Yahoo Travel Executive Editor Laura Begley Bloom told CBS News. “Then along came Skiplagged and your average traveler suddenly knew about it.
Michael Boyd, president of an aviation consulting firm, told CNN he was trained to assist customers in finding such fares when he worked for American Airlines as a ticket agent three decades ago.
“I don’t think it’s illegal what he’s doing,” he told CNN.
American Airlines has called the strategy “unethical” but not illegal in a recent letter to travel agents.
A United spokesman said, “This practice violates our fare rules and we are taking action to stop it to help protect the vast majority of customers who buy legitimate tickets.”
Some travel experts say that shutting down Zaman’s website won’t do much for the airlines.
“If [Skiplagged is] shut down, undoubtedly there will be other people to come along to scrape fares and make them available,” said Robert Mann, president of R.W. Mann & Company airline consulting firm in New York, according to CNN.
Zaman launched a crowd-funding campaign on GoFundMe.com in November to acquire funds to pay for his lawsuit.
As of late morning on Wednesday, Dec. 31, more than $36,600 in donations had been made.
(With reports from CBS, CNN, and RT)
(www.asianjournal.com)
(LA Weekend January 3-6, 2015 Sec. D pg.2)
