American Airlines made news not long ago when they caught 17-year-old Logan Parsons trying to skiplag on his Gainesville (GNV) – Charlotte (CLT) – New York (JFK) flight. The boy’s parents had made the reservation for him on Skiplagged dot com.
At first, the airline cancelled his ticket and told his parents they’d have to purchase a GNV-CLT ticket, which was about $250 more than his GNV-CLT-JFK ticket had cost. But to add insult to injury, the airline decided to make an example out of Logan (who [A] is a minor and [B] didn’t make the reservation) and have now punished him even further.
Skiplagging goes by a variety of other names. Hidden City ticketing. Point Beyond Ticketing. Throwaway Ticketing. Fare arbitrage (I had to look it up, too. Arbitrage is the practice of taking advantage of a difference in prices in two or more markets; striking a combination of matching deals to capitalize on the difference, the profit being the difference between the market prices at which the unit is traded. Thanks, Wikipedia!). They all mean the same thing: Flying on a flight that has a stopover and exiting then, instead of at the intended endpoint listed on your ticket.
Not surprisingly, airlines hate skiplagging, because they lose money. In the case of Logan Parsons above, his GNV-CLT-JFK ticket cost $150. Had he gotten a direct GNV-CLT flight, it would have cost $400. Multiply that type of money loss (varying from dozens to hundreds of dollars) over the course of thousands upon thousands of passengers per year, and you’re talking about the airlines losing out on millions of dollars per year. So of course they don’t like it, and some airlines have reportedly invested in software and other means to “catch” those who participate in skiplagging.
At their most basic level to combat skiplagging, most airlines have written into their contract of carriage (COC), in so many words, that it’s not allowed. Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Avelo Airlines, Breeze Airways, Delta Air Lines, Frontier Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Southwest Airlines, Spirit Airways, Sun Country Airlines and United Airlines all have such language in their respective COCs.
Some of these airlines have also threatened or carried out various ways to combat skiplagging – banning (like what they did to Parsons), canceling the return ticket, closing their loyalty accounts, and sometimes even bringing them to court.
However, 2 airlines, even if they don’t necessarily like skiplagging, seem to take a different stance than most of the others:
Allegiant Air
From Allegiant’s contract of carriage, Section 20, Letter D (boldface is ours):
When a roundtrip or multi–segment reservation has been made and the passenger fails to claim his or her reservation for the first portion of the trip, Carrier reserves the right to cancel the return or continuing portions of the passenger’s reservation for purposes of reservation inventory management. Carrier does not prohibit or penalize what is commonly known as “back–to–back” or “hidden–city” ticketing.
So they’ll let you skiplag, and won’t punish those who do. But if you do skiplag on one of their flights, they reserve the right to cancel your return trip. (So, in reading between the lines: make your return reservation on another airline).
Breeze Airways
From Breeze’s contract of carriage, Section 3.4 (Routing):
A fare only applies to the following:
3.4.1 Transportation between airports via the intermediate cities, if any, specified by Breeze in reference to that fare.
However, Breeze told Insider that it won’t ban passengers who use a throwaway ticket. Breeze also told them that their airline does, “not generally see that behavior as our pricing does not incentivize guests to skiplag.”
So there you go – if you skiplag on Allegiant or Breeze, it looks as if you’re (mostly, probably) home free, as long as you’re careful.
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7 comments
Airlines do not necessarily lose money on skiplagging. They might make money, albeit less of a profit.
“Making less profit” means losing money.
Allegiant does not sell connecting itineraries… you have to build them yourself on separate tickets (and they won’t guarantee the connection or treat you differently if you miss the next flight) so you in effect cannot skiplag on them by definition. They sometimes run deals where there is a discount for booking a one way, which may make the effective price per flight lower, but you’re going to spend more money in the first place (one way is $50, round trip is $90, works out to $45 per flight but you’ve got to spend the $90 to get that).
Breeze for now, I’ve found, only offers very limited connections. Most of their flights that involve a stop in another city are “Breeze-thru” which are effectively a one-stop continuing flight with no aircraft/flight number change. The connections they do offer are only at a couple of airports, usually involve a 4-5 hour layover thanks to the schedule, and are priced like buying two different tickets.
I don’t know why someone would risk it with skiplagging, especially on a regular basis, and especially involving smaller markets. I know someone who did this recently and their bag got checked at the gate to their ticketed destination of Worchester, MA (ORH). They eventually got it a week later after they had made their way to Boston and had to drive out to get it. This was with American, and they would not forward the bag on – he said it sounded like they guessed what he was up to and were trying to get him to admit it. He only saved $50 on airfare, and wasted more than that in gas and time/effort/toiletries purchase.
Any airline that only sells point-to-point itineraries like Allegiant wouldn’t care less about hidden city ticketing because it doesn’t affect them anyway.
Is it even legal to punish skiplagging? It’s like a restaurant forcing customers to eat their leftover food because it is on their plate.
Typical greedy airlines. Won’t let you get a break but will take every penny you have.
[…] The 2 Airlines that Won’t Punish Skiplagging Passengers: I recently wrote a post about Skiplagging. The folks at YMMV have done some research about airlines that don’t punish passengers for Skiplagging. Check out this post at Your Mileage May Vary. […]