Airlines Hate 'Skiplagging.' Meet the Man Who Helps Travelers Pull It Off
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
> Q: Could airlines close this loophole, if they wanted to?
> A: Yes, it’s their own prices that allow this.
> If they want to shut down skiplagging, they could do it tomorrow. One way to do it would be reducing airfare to hub cities. The reason the price is so high because they control this market and want to maximize their profits. It’s the reason hidden cities even exist.
I mean, yeah, that's true. To eliminate the allure of hidden city ticketing, the airlines could reduce the prices on some of their most profitable routes. But my understanding is that airlines don't tend to have huge profit margins overall. If government mandated that the price for segment A->B is always cheaper than A->B->C, would the airlines be able to service as many marginally profitable routes? How much of the comprehensive air network that we take for granted would disappear if such a rule went into effect?
I'm not generally a fan of the airlines. I think their pricing practices have become those of pathological assholes. But I guess I would actually prefer the status quo over a future with simple, straightforward air fares that only serve a fraction of today's airports.
Is this assuming that there would be empty seats if the hidden city nonsense wasn't allowed?
An airline incurs a giant cost at the moment it decides to fly a route, everything after that is almost pure income, with little or no associated cost. Consider Cuba Airlines, which I invented right now because Cuba is between Belgium and Belize. The routes Belgium-Cuba, Belgium-Belize and Cuba-Belize have three different sets of competing airlines, so Cuba Airlines can sell those three tickets, but faces different competition doing so. Maybe it can charge more for Belgium-Cuba than for Belgium-Belize, maybe less.
If the route Cuba-Belize isn't generally full enough for the kinds of planes Cuba Airlines has on hand and the competitive situation allows charging more for Belgium-Cuba than Belgium-Belize, what can Cuba Airlines do to fill the planes up?
If you say that the prices for Belgium-Cuba has to be lower than Belgium-Belize, maybe that's okay, and maybe it means that Cuba Airlines can't charge enough to pay for the two flights. It depends on how the competitive situations are for the three routes.