Slashdot Mirror
United and Orbitz Sue 22-Year-Old Programmer For Compiling Public Info
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.
It has always existed, and people and companies have always used it. All the airlines want to do is to make it more difficult to find it. If they really want to stop the practice, they could charge full fare for the popular segments and refund the money if the less popular options are actually exercised. They are not doing it that way. It is clear they want to accept it with a wink-and-a-nod to the savvy passengers and make the hurried and less informed passengers to pay a little more.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
So book 2 one ways: JFK-LAX-???, LAX-JFK-???.
You don't *have* to book that as a round trip, although if you book the return leg on the same airline you throw away ??? You might have your return leg cancelled.
Fwiw frequent fliers have known this for years. Search the forums at flyertalk.com
Why would this ever be cheaper?
Because the price of (domestic) air travel has nothing to do with expenses or distance, and everything to do with marketing games.
First, how many people want to go from NY to LA or vice-versa every day? Getting as big of a slice of that pie as possible matters more than getting a few extra bucks for the ticket. How many people want to go from NY or LA to Detroit, however? Probably not anywhere near as many; But, if you fly Delta, you will pay less to stop in Detroit for a connector than you will for a direct flight. So... Just don't catch the connector. Simple as that!
You can verify this for yourself - Go to any of the major travel search sites and pick a random longish trip with one layover. Now compare the price of that longer trip against the cost of flying directly to the layover city - It will almost always cost significantly more.
If the airlines don't want people to find ways to game the system, they can make the problem vanish overnight - Stop making the system itself a game. Turn air travel into a "utility" model, with a sane, predictable pricing structure (something like $X per mile plus $Y per individual flight, plus any applicable passenger class upcharges). Instead, the entire industry would rather piss around with games and "loyalty" programs and such.
Because air line ticket pricing makes no sense. Literally. I fly a lot (as in somewhere around 100K miles a year) and ticket pricing is pretty absurd. A one-way ticket can sometimes cost 3x what a round trip does to the same destination. Flying from my home airport (a small regional destination) can sometimes lower the price of the ticket, even though I fly one extra leg and 100 miles to a major airport.
United is by far the worst of the price abusers; one reason I no longer fly United. The last time I needed to make a route change, they wanted to charge me $250 for the change, and $1200 for the "additional fare". I bought a one-way on American for $350. Of course, walking away from the second leg is "against ticket policy" so as a good drone I was supposed to cough up $1450 to United.
In my experience no other airline gouges its customers as badly as United when it comes to these sorts of policies, so it does not surprise me that they are on this lawsuit. They are also on the bottom of nearly every customer satisfaction survey; maybe the two are related? Anyone at United listening? Hello?
Gate check your large bag, you'll get it back at the arriving gate.
This is incorrect - When you gate-check a bag it's "checked through to your final destination" - You pick it up on the baggage carousel.
The exception is regional-jet and turboprop flights where you "leave your bag in the jetway." In these situations your bag is returned to the jetway.
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.