Teenager detained at airport after trying to use “skiplagging” trick
dailymail.co.uk
dailymail.co.uk
That's some unrealised-gain bullshit logic that would make a crypto-bro blush.
Airlines cost me millions, millions I say!, per day in lost revenue because they very unfairly do not wire me 10% of their income every day as I think they should.
>That's some unrealised-gain bullshit logic that would make a crypto-bro blush.
I agree that the logic for equating potential lost sales as actual lost revenue is flawed, but in this case the numbers are very conservative, and thus entirely plausible. Apparently there are more than 4 billion flights per year pre pandemic[1], so "tens of thousands" (50k?) in actual losses (ie. cases where someone bought the cheaper ticket, and would have otherwise purchased the more expensive ticket) seems like an absolute certainty.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/564717/airline-industry-...
And how are they claiming they lost money due to skip lagging? If anything they’d gain money on the smaller amount of fuel needed for the second leg because he wasn’t on it.
The word kafkaesque becomes more relevant every day.
It's bullshit accounting to spin things in their favor.
The reason this happened is because adults intimidated a child. If it were me, I would have told them to fuck off, sure that I was planning to go to NYC, and oh crap I'd unexpectedly get food poisoning in Charlotte and had to stay there.
Airlines are trying to have their cake and eat it, too, with their BS fare games. If they don't want people "skiplagging" they should price their tickets accordingly.
There really needs to be punitive damages.
That prices are higher for a partial flight is the criminal aspect here.
Generally the premium is higher than the increased cost of one more passenger on that last leg.
Fly A -> B -> C: $200, Fly A -> B: $900
Only way to get caught is to offer the details up. He had to have told the agents the wrong city or something like that.
Anyway it’s a great trick to shave a few bucks off your flight. And let’s be honest, they would do it to you if the situation was reversed. They 100% would.
Clever people who needed to make two closely spaced round trips would book one ticket LA-NY-LA and a second ticket NY-LA-NY. They would fly out to NY on Monday on ticket #1, return home to LA on Friday using ticket #2, go back to NY the following Monday using ticket #2 and return to LA the following Friday using the second half of ticket #1. Both tickets stayed at their mid point over a weekend, so they paid the lower fare.
This was easy to do before airline security increased due to 9/11 because there were no TSA checkpoints (anyone remember when you could meet arriving passengers at the gate? and airlines didn't really check ID when boarding, so you could book the two tickets with a slight misspelling of your name and the agents at the gate would let you board.
I'm sorry. I forgot who pays the bribes to Congress.
It's entirely "rational" when you factor in price discrimination.
I didn't know this practice existed before today.
Now, I don't understand airline economics, but this seems to me like a pricing issue.
How can a direct flight be more expensive than a connecting that is over a larger distance and so more fuel cost? Its about risks.
TIL: -https://www.smartertravel.com/why-are-nonstops-more-expensiv...
Why would they need to do that? It already violates the terms of carriage, which is illegal (albeit only civilly).
1. Even the name "skiplagging" sounds similar to the invented crime of "jaywalking" to me - jaywalking a crime famously invented by US car companies to take control of our roads.
2. "At the gate, however, Logan's North Carolina ID raised red flags with the agent and the teen was subsequently taken to a security room and interrogated, Hunter said." I would be livid if I were this kid's parents. They're trying to treat their BS way to make more money as a crime.
In short, airlines are fucking around and I hope they find out.
That's a popular explanation, but this dictionary explanation suggests the origin isn't so sinister.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/why-is-it-call...
I think you're really reaching here. While "jaywalking" can be construed as having a negative connotation ("jay" means "a dull or ignorant person"), the same can't be said for "skiplagging" which so far as I can tell doesn't contain any negative connotations. (ie. "skip" from skipping a particular leg, and "lagged" in reference to "leg" or "jetlag". Moreover, there's literally a site called skiplagged.com that helps people find tickets. If they're trying to demonize the term, they're doing a really bad job.
1. Corporations
2. Small businesses
3. Homeowners
4. Consumers
5. If you’re not one of the above, you’re lower than dirt.
Doesn't say that in the article, and he had a state-issued ID. Now, perhaps he had one just for this, but I could believe the kid is 15 years old, which means he isn't an "unaccompanied minor" in airline terms. And if it was a driver's license (as reported in other outlets, but I'm pretty sure that they didn't fact-check that detail), he'd have to be 16 to have one.
Do you have another source for this? I'd love to be wrong.
Apparently not everyone. Every time I'm at the airport near the check in area, the "check in" line is many times longer than the "baggage drop" line.
> The folks at the airplane gate don’t look at id
You are simply incorrect. Modern airports are full of kiosks that require you to show an ID before they will give out any information (call it what you will, I call it a ticket desk, since they can usually print you boarding passes). Since you didn't read the article carefully and clearly don't know how airports work in this age, it's really up to you to be outraged at phantoms.
When I book an airline ticket, I'm making a contract that says "I'm paying you to transport my person and belongings from Point A to Point B to Point C with these details." Now unless I cancel or modify that reservation, the airline is expecting me to follow through, because I'm monetarily invested.
What are the consequences of missing my flight? My name will be on the manifest and the airline will wonder what happened to me. They probably won't file a missing persons report, but their records will note that I had a flight but I wasn't on it.
So what if I've done some "hidden city ticketing" and the aircraft on the last leg crashes? My friends and family, and first responders, might wonder where I am at that point. Was I on the flight? Did I miss it? Why would I miss the last leg of a multipoint flight?
What if I am "hidden city ticketing" to another country? Isn't that going to get sticky with immigration? I mean, I fly to Spain and then Istanbul, and my airline continues on to Kazakhstan, but I'm hanging out at the Hagia Sophia. What are the Kazakhstani authorities gonna say about my visa plans or however I faked out everybody and made them believe I was going there? Isn't Turkey going to have something to say about my continued presence when I never should've left the airport?
Logistically, it must really mess up the airlines' planning and operations. If people get in the habit of reserving seats they don't intend to fart in, then that's a capacity problem. Passengers gonna get bumped. Imagine a whole 737 full of "hidden city ticketer" seats that doesn't even bother departing.
Yeah, I get it, passengers save money. Solve the fare imbalance somehow, airlines! Obviously if hackers are hacking you then you need a mitigation, and it's bad optics for you to detain and interrogate a script kiddie, such that he makes a headline on the Daily Fail. COVID-19 hurt us all; suck it up.
As I mentioned, airlines have plenty of policies to deal with reserved but unused seats, but you've still intentionally taken away a finite resource because you wanted to save a couple bucks.
the ticket on the second leg had been paid for
> but you've still intentionally taken away a finite resource because you wanted to save a couple bucks.
it's really going to blow your mind when you realise airlines do the reverse all the time
they call it "overbooking"
knowingly selling the same seat twice? sounds like "low level fraud" by your definition
It’s not considered fraud though
When the consumer does something to save money you call it "fraud". When the airline does it, it's okay because "policies"? Putting aside the asinine "contract" for a second, how is one morally correct, while the other isn't?
This is a moot point because they never promised exclusive access in the first place.
>Putting aside the asinine "contract" for a second, how is one morally correct, while the other isn't?
This just moves the goalposts to an area where anything goes. You could argue that skiplagging is morally correct, because your morals are "corporations are scum, consumers are always in the right", or take a hardcore deontological view that any sort of lying/misrepresentation is morally wrong.
That's the implied deal when they sell you the ticket. It's the public perception. Only in the fine print does it says otherwise. Hence, that's why people are so outraged when it happens to them.
I'd also argue that the corporation's contract with the consumer is not fair because there is a gross imbalance of power. Airlines (as a group) can put almost anything they want and the consumer has no recourse (except meek consumer protection laws).
Anyways, I just found it interesting that you jumped at the opportunity to vociferously call what the consumer did "fraud" but what the airlines do (ie double booking) as normal business.
While it's correct in a legal sense, I don't think that's a very interesting discussion. The contract is the contract, sure. But the big picture deserves examination also.
>This just moves the goalposts to an area where anything goes.
No, we were discussing a very specific situation. Don't do that.
But you've strawmanned this. Do you go to the gym, put your towel down on the leg press machine, and then go to the juice bar for a drink? Because that's what we're discussing here: taking away a finite resource so that others can't use it.
People with unused gym memberships who don't show up haven't promised anything. They didn't make an appointment with a personal trainer, they don't have machines reserved, there's no implicit contract to exchange limited resources for a membership fee. Your membership fee gives you access to these resources, not a guarantee of their usage. If you go to the gym and every treadmill is in use, then you don't get a treadmill for now. You just wait for a treadmill.
Point being, many happenings are more nuanced than Alice wronged Bob and Bob did nothing wrong to Alice. I suspect if you read the parent comment again you may indeed find some of their points to be agreeable.
This is a pretty agreeable take except the seeming implication that any “skiplaggers” are doing something wrong. They really just (currently) play the airlines’ game better and the airlines are being over-sensitive about it.
The proper solution for this would be for the airlines to fix their pricing issues rather than to intimidate random passengers into paying the “correct” amount and pretend it was the individual passenger’s fault when they committed this supposed fraud.