United and Orbitz Sue 22-Year-Old Programmer For Compiling Public Info

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday December 30, 2014 @01:11AM from the and-for-making-it-harder-to-squeeze-blood-from-a-stone dept.

linuxwrangler writes: Aktarer Zaman, a young computer scientist, started a "side project" called Skiplagged to compile a relatively well-known method of finding inexpensive airfares. "The idea is that you buy an airline ticket that has a layover at your actual destination. Say you want to fly from New York to San Francisco — you actually book a flight from New York to Lake Tahoe with a layover in San Francisco and get off there, without bothering to take the last leg of the flight." But organizing fully public information into a user-friendly form has gotten him sued by United and Orbitz. They accuse his not-for-profit site of "unfair competition" and of promoting "strictly prohibited" travel.

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Re:Cheaper by CohibaVancouver · 2014-12-30 03:39 · Score: 5, Insightful

they're actually really incompetent at running airlines?
They're *all* incompetent? United? American? Virgin America? Delta? Southwest? JetBlue? Alaska? Spirit? Frontier? Hawaiian? Allegiant? Every single one of them, moving millions of people every week, they're all incompetent at running airlines?

Sorry, I don't buy it.