Judge Tosses United Airlines Lawsuit Over 'Hidden City' Tickets

An anonymous reader writes: United Airlines lost a legal round in its effort to stop a website that helps people find 'hidden city' ticket pairs. The airline, along with online travel site Orbitz, sued New York-based Skiplagged.com and its founder, Aktarer Zaman, in November seeking an injunction to stop the site from sending users to Orbitz to purchase United tickets. A federal judge ruled Thursday that Illinois isn't the proper venue for the carrier's claims.

Comments

Minor inconvenience for United

[grimmjeeper]

All this ruling does is make them go back and file it in the appropriate venue. And while that's the right thing to do from a legal standpoint, it will have basically no bearing on the case when it is filed again in the appropriate location. This doesn't address the merits of the case (or lack thereof) in any way.

Re:Minor inconvenience for United

[rahvin112]

Other than they were jurisdiction shopping in a venue that would be more likely to win because they are headquartered there and the juror pool would be likely to be influenced by that?

The judge didn't rule on venue without it being challenged by the defense. United didn't pick this court by accident.

Re:Minor inconvenience for United

[dunkindave]

The claim that the defendants don't have significant presence in Illinois for purposes of legal action, in the context of an Internet-based service, is just ridiculous. The judge is applying brick-and-mortar rules to a global network.

No, he is apply the law. Where to file is spelled out in 28 US Code 1391, and unless you can't for some reason, like you don't know where the defendant lives, the place to file is "a judicial district in which any defendant resides". The law is clear, and the judge has no choice but to follow it.

I wish it had been dismissed on the merits

[hawguy]

Too bad it was just a procedural dismissal due to wrong venue and not due to the merits of the case.

United said such ticketing schemes violate its fare rules. For one thing, the tickets capture seats that will go unused, and an airline would have no way to sell those unused seats

Well, actually, they already *have* sold those seats -- to the person that bought the ticket and decided not to use the rest of it. But it's not true that they have no way to sell those seats -- if the flight is overbooked or full, then they'll fill the unused seat with a bumped or standby passenger. But if they want to be able to sell that seat before departure time, all they have to do is give the ticket holder a way to cancel that leg of the bookng, perhaps refunding a small percentage of the purchase price as an incentive to do so.

So it's not true that they have no way to sell the seats, they just don't want to do it.

Re:I wish it had been dismissed on the merits

[hawguy]

I've never understood why they won't transfer me to an otherwise empty seat on an earlier flight when I happen to be early for a connection. It would seem to be in their best interest to fill up the planes and push the "empty seat" to a later flight when they have a chance of selling it, but they never do offer me a free change, they always want to charge me an extra $50, so I just get a soda and wait it out.

They used to do that, I used have no problem fly standby on an earlier flight when I got there early. But then I guess they found out that it's convenient for passengers so it's something that they need to charge for because no one should get anything for free when flying.

'Hidden city' explanation

[QuasiSteve]

Wouldn't have hurt to put this in the summary - who RTFA?

Say you want to fly from NY to Chicago, and that'd cost $300. You can also get a ticket from NY to LA, and that'd cost $250. The catch? That flight from NY to LA also lands in Chicago.
So if you wanted to go from NY to Chicago, you'd be better off buying the NY to LA ticket instead, saving $50.

The airlines don't like this, because if you book NY to LA, they can no longer sell the Chicago to LA seat (except at last minute rates or more often push standby passengers onto that flight) that might normally be $150. So not only are they out $50 on you, they're potentially out an additional $150 on the unsold seat.
( They save a few $ in fuel consumption, food and beverages, etc. )

Presumably the solution would be to not make part-flights more expensive than full-flights to begin with, but I'm sure the bean counters worked out that this is still the more profitable route for them.

As for headline - yeah, it's only tossed out because it's the wrong venue.. there's really no winner or loser, other than the courts who wasted time on a case that they apparently shouldn't have spent any time on at all.

Re:'Hidden city' explanation

[tnk1]

How does this work with checked luggage? Presumably your stuff won't be pulled from baggage if you aren't expected to get off in Chicago, but instead in LA.

Obviously, if you only have carry on luggage, that works fine.

Re:'Hidden city' explanation

[Weirsbaski]

The airlines don't like this, because if you book NY to LA, they can no longer sell the Chicago to LA seat

What do you mean? They did sell that seat: to me, as part of a trip I paid for, and at the price they thought was fair. If I choose to not use part of what I paid for, well, I still paid for it.

The airline's complaint would be like me going to a restaurant, ordering the steak&potatoes but only eating the steak, and the restaurant complaining this should be illegal because they could've made more money selling the (wasted) potatoes to someone else.

Fair

[anmre]

You're a fucking airline. You're going where I need to go and I bought a ticket. If I'm not on the plane for the second half of the trip, you've saved that much on fuel. Fuck off.

hmm

[alzoron]

For one thing, the tickets capture seats that will go unused, and an airline would have no way to sell those unused seats.

So they're arguing that because the customer doesn't use a seat they paid for thus preventing them from reselling it to someone else that they can't resell it to someone else.

What?

Re:Good

[dunkindave]

This has similarities to what I saw in inkjet printers many years ago. For a while, they were selling printers at a big discount because they would make their money on the replacement ink cartridges. Problem was the new printers came with a new full color and black cartridge and cost less than it cost to buy the two cartridges individually. It was actually cheaper to buy a new printer, take the cartridges out of the boxes, and throw away the printer, than it was to buy replacement cartridges. Same thing here - it is sometimes cheaper to buy more of a trip than you need then throw away part of it you don't need.

Regarding the cartridges, due to a couple issues that came up, such as this one, they started including cartridges that were 1/2 to 1/3 full with new printers.

Re:Good

[nmb3000]

Nobody should be required to buy into loss leaders or other pricing schemes like this.

And now they're taking a page out of the BSA's lawyer playbook with this "lost revenue" crap. Just because someone could have bought a $500 ticket from NY to SLC doesn't mean that $100 was stolen from United because they bought a $400 ticket that was NY to LA with a layover in SLC.

And then there's airline pricing in general. I always have a hard time feeling sorry for the airlines, but when the price of oil (the biggest expense for them) dropped like a rock end of last year, did the airlines lower ticket prices or remove fuel surcharges? Nope.

Big companies like airlines have used obscure and convoluted pricing schemes for decades as a way to screw over the average customer. Seeing them get thrown back into their faces isn't illegal -- it's a sweet dose of justice.

Re:Legal Fees

[luckymutt]

So they don't want to fund a project that benefits bigotry. Thanks. I like them more now.