I don’t think “progressive” is the right word. “Free-markety?” But for that to actually be true you’d need the market forces of sites like skiplagged to balance it out.
I know this your classic David vs. Goliath legal battle where the one with the larger legal budget prevails, but what would be the outcome if “David” were joined up with the legal forces from the “Institute for Justice”, or the FTC to ultimately put the matter to rest?
I wonder what their hairbrained legal theory is.
AA can screw themselves. Nobody has a legal obligation to fly both legs of a flight they purchase. Maybe we should sue airlines for routinely overbooking flights?
Does anyone know the IT behind this? The article doesn’t go much further than describing Skiplag as ‘poses as an ordinary consumer’ but to my limited understanding of aviation IT there might be more to it. Does Skiplagging have a travel agent license perhaps? Or some other way of getting to the GDS (or NDC?) behind the American Airline’s website? If not, there must be a way of automating the interactions of a website that have not heard of before.
Even if the second leg of your trip is cancelled, your baggage will eventually go to the final destination, even if you give up and rent a car. (NEVER book a flight with a layover in O’Hare. NEVER)
Last time I went to LA my flight to LAX was cancelled at the last minute by the airline (this was when airlines were having huge problems with cancellations across the board) and I had to re-book to Santa Ana instead. Despite it only being about 40 miles away from LAX, the drive to my destination in downtown LA ended up taking almost 3 hours versus 1 hour. I would have been willing to take a puddle jumper from SNA to LAX just to save the aggravation of spending almost 3 hours in an Uber even if the time savings would have been minimal in the end.
I dunno, does anybody really understand or even read those hundreds of pages long contracts of carriage that are agreed to as a part of booking a flight?
This may just be LA-centric whining, but I don’t get how any medium-to-large city doesn’t have a train/subway from their airport towards the city-center. Traffic, parking, rentals are never going to be sufficient and are a bottleneck to expanding the airport itself. I figured it was taxi lobbyists, but I can’t imagine they have much sway in at least a decade.
The headache and overhead of getting to the airport, dealing with bags and security, and being treated like cattle make other forms of transport way more appealing even if transit time or cost are equivalent. I remember seeing artiles about adding TSA-like security to train travel and everyone talked about how it would be that much harder to make train travel desirable in the US.
You can thank the geniuses behind Sabre and the labyrinth of spaghetti code that stitches the modern(ish) booking user interface to the backend 1950’s era reservation system that’s still in use.
You actually do have a legal obligation to do just that, read your contract of carriage.
There are a variety of reasons why airlines are getting upset about this now. First off is that it messes with their weights and fuel calculations, second is that the TSA is coming down hard on “missing passengers” and demanding luggage audits (so even if you don’t check a bag, they still have to audit if you aren’t on the flight because many people gate check bags and the TSA bans bags from flying on flights without passengers on those flights), and a variety of costing reasons.
This site in particular though has given fake prices, sometimes far higher than what the actual airlines charge for the actual routes direct to a destination, and also isn’t a licensed travel agent. That’s the main problem I’ve had with it. Every time I tried it anyway, it turned out they were giving me prices about $100 / $200 higher for the skiplagged flight than the actual direct flight, AND claiming they were saving me money.
Airlines hate every weird trick.
And they hate their passengers. And they hate their passenger’s luggage. And they hate the FAA. And they hate their employees.
But the thing they hate most of all is the thought of you having money in your pocket instead of theirs.
There is no legal obligation to fly on all legs of your itinerary; there is a penalty (cancellation of the remainder of your itinerary) for failing to fly, but this penalty only exists in a contract between you and the airline that you had no choice but to agree to when purchasing your flight; it is not enshrined in law.
Umm…you know that contracts create legal obligations, right? A legal obligation is not the same as a law.
Which airport? LA has at least six, depending how you define “LA”.
Assuming you mean LAX, yes, it’s absolutely the taxi lobby preventing LAX from being connected to the subway system. There are long-standing back room deals that prevented trains from ever being built within “X” miles of LAX. They are finally building a connection soon, though. The taxi lobby is finally weakening after almost 60 years or so of controlling all transport at LAX.
American cities do very little because it’s in the best interest of the people. That’s what you may not be getting. Everything is controlled by lobbyists. No need to wonder why things aren’t better for you. Wonder only who is profiting by the way it is.
Under that definition then, there’s no legal obligation to pay back loans or mortgages if the intent to not pay them back is not fraudulent. Which, of course, is not true.
In the case of a loan, the mortgage you sign states you owe $x. If you fail to pay, you still owe them $x (perhaps with added penalties the longer you fail to pay).
With a contract of carriage, the customer has not necessarily promised to fly all legs of the itinerary. The contract says, essentially, “if you fail to fly on one leg of your itinerary, we reserve the right to cancel the rest of your itinerary.” The terms and conditions of the customer-misses-a-leg scenario are completely explained and covered by the contract, and result in neither a breach of contract nor violation of the law.
Bringing it back full circle: a website that allows people to, essentially, invoke certain clauses of their contract of carriage (specifically the skip-a-leg-and-lose-the-rest) should be perfectly legal because there is nothing illegal about skipping a leg.
Um…you might want to read the actual terms of carriage. This is from United.
" 1. Prohibited Practices:
- Fares apply for travel only between the points for which they are published. Tickets may not be purchased and used at fare(s) from an initial departure point on the Ticket which is before the Passenger’s actual point of origin of travel, or to a more distant point(s) than the Passenger’s actual destination being traveled even when the purchase and use of such Tickets would produce a lower fare. This practice is known as “Hidden Cities Ticketing” or “Point Beyond Ticketing” and is prohibited by UA.
- The purchase and use of round-trip Tickets for the purpose of one-way travel only, known as “Throwaway Ticketing” is prohibited by UA.
- The use of Flight Coupons from two or more different Tickets issued at round trip fares for the purpose of circumventing applicable tariff rules (such as advance purchase/minimum stay requirements) commonly referred to as “Back-to-Back Ticketing” is prohibited by UA.
- The failure to comply with applicable stayover requirements, the failure to meet the purpose or status requirement associated with the Ticket’s fare category, and the purchase or use of a Ticket that UA determines circumvents the applicable fare rules.
- Obtaining a ticket, service, product, or refund through fraudulent or deceptive means, including but not limited to by credit card or other payment fraud, whether actual or suspected, by submitting a chargeback for services that have been rendered, or by submitting fraudulent documentation.
- Any practice that United believes, in its sole discretion, is exploitative, abusive or that manipulates/bypasses/overrides United’s fare and ticket rules.
- UA’s Remedies for Violation(s) of Rules - Where a Ticket is booked, held, purchased and/or used in violation of the law, these rules or any fare rule (including Hidden Cities Ticketing, Point Beyond Ticketing, Throwaway Ticketing, or Back-to-Back Ticketing), UA, without notice to the passenger, has the right in its sole discretion to take all actions permitted by law, including but not limited to, the following:
- Invalidate the Ticket(s);
- Cancel any remaining portion of the Passenger’s itinerary and/or void out any associated electronic travel certificate or credit;
- Confiscate any unused Flight Coupons until the amount reflected in 5) below is collected;
- Permanently ban or refuse to board the Passenger and to carry the Passenger’s baggage, unless the difference between the fare paid and the fare for transportation used is collected prior to boarding;
- Assess the Passenger any amounts owed to UA, including but not limited to for seat blocking, for the actual value of the service or ancillary product, and for the full value of a Ticket, which shall be the difference between the lowest fare applicable to the Passenger’s actual itinerary and the fare actually paid, including after the transportation or service have been provided;
- Delete miles, points, credits or any other benefits in or related to the Passenger’s frequent flyer account (UA’s MileagePlus Program), revoke the Passenger’s Elite status, if any, in the MileagePlus Program, terminate the Passenger’s participation in the MileagePlus Program, terminate any other air transportation agreement between UA and the Passenger, or take any other action permitted by the MileagePlus Program Rules in UA’s “MileagePlus Rules;”
- Charge a delivery fee and penalty, set at United’s discretion, to send Checked Baggage to the Passenger; and
- Take legal action with respect to the Passenger."
You can always declare bankruptcy…
Anyway violating the CoC may not be criminal but that doesn’t mean you can’t face consequences if you violate the terms of the agreement. Regardless, I think we can all agree that airlines are scumbags.
(IANAL and this is not legal advice, but IIRC @anon85524460 is, and you should listen to them.)
