Although I do not use it for my own travels, I have been a proponent of Skiplagged since its inception and sing its praises loudly on this blog and at conferences. But a looming shift in the way it sells and displays fares represents the wrong way to raise revenue.
What Is Skiplagged?
Hidden city ticketing, also called skiplagging as a testament to the growth of the Skiplagged website, is a practice where you book a connecting flight(s) via your intended destination in order to save money on the “nonstop” flight. Since airlines tend to charge a premium for nonstop service, this can save hundreds of dollars.
For example, Los Angeles to Chicago may be $480 but booking Los Angeles to Chicago on the same flight with a connection to Buffalo may drop the fare to $264. A savvy Chicago-bound flyer might book the connection to Buffalo then step off the flight in Chicago.
There are catches, of course. First, you cannot check bags since U.S. airlines do not allow bags to be “short-checked” in most situations. Second, you risk your frequent flyer account by affixing it to the reservation, since this is one-way airlines can punish passengers for engaging in skiplagging. Third, you may run into issues in the case of irregular operations. A flight delay or cancellation may suddenly lead to a different or direct routing which will be harder to undo.
I would never jeopardize my frequent flyer benefits, especially my lifetime MilionMiler status on United, so I personally do not use Skiplagged for my travels…even on American, Delta, or Alaska where my status and mileage balances are lower.
But I have many friends and clients who are desperate to save a few bucks on airfare and Skiplagged certainly facilities that. The website is easy to use and has been a great tool…until recently. I still fully believe that if you buy A + B you are free to use A only and walk away…I reject all airline arguments arguing that this is somehow ethically suspect.
Skiplagged Seems To Be Preparing To Mask Hidden City Deals
Last week, I noticed that Skipplagged began graying out connection cities on hidden city tickets. In that example above, you’d see the LAX-ORD flight, but not where it connects to or how long the connection is.
On the surface, this makes sense. Up until this point, there was no incentive to book directly with Skiplagged. Why pay a $35 “service fee” when you can just take the information you gathered and then bypass the travel agent that did the work, in a very literal sense, and book directly with the airline? Skiplagged is justified in wishing to earn revenue from its product. After all, it is only Skiplagged that is masterfully able to display these additional options.
But there are other concerns at play. For example, how long is the connection? A shorter connection makes skiplagging much riskier than a longer one. What is the connection city? It matters because a weather-prone station may carry far more risk than to another city. All of this is essential in properly evaluating whether to book a Skiplagged ticket.
Then, just as suddenly, Skiplagged reverted back to its old display results (where you actually see prior to booking which specific segment(s) you will dump).
I had a conversation with Skiplagged about this on Twitter:
(2/2) I am happy to see the transparency back, but why was it gone in the first place? What kind of horrible experiment was that? Please don’t ruin your brand by being miserly!
— Matthew Klint – Live And Let’s Fly (@LiveandLetsFly) October 7, 2022
Skiplagged replied sarcastically:
Why do you need to see the details of a flight leg that you won’t be taking?
— Skiplagged | Travel ✈️ (@Skiplagged) October 7, 2022
I responded:
Because I want to know if I have a very quick layover or a long one. Short layovers make skiplagging much riskier.
Plus, I don’t want to pay your scam booking fee. If you’re having a revenue problem, a subscription model beats the lack of transparency in your recent experiment.
— Matthew Klint – Live And Let’s Fly (@LiveandLetsFly) October 7, 2022
Skiplagged responded back:
Users who book hidden city flights on average save $128 – seems far from a scam. We are the one flight search engine that stands up for the traveler instead of aligning with the airlines and only showing the flights they want you to see. I’d think you would support that
— Skiplagged | Travel ✈️ (@Skiplagged) October 7, 2022
I responded back:
I do support it…I’ve written glowingly about you on the blog and urged thousands to check out your website at the conferences I speak at. But I greatly value transparency, so please do consider other ways to raise revenue besides hiding critical flight details.
— Matthew Klint – Live And Let’s Fly (@LiveandLetsFly) October 7, 2022
Again, Skiplagged is free to adopt any policy it wants and charge any fee it wants…that’s not the issue. The issue is the lack of transparency and its implications, which I will discuss below.
Lack Of Transparency Could Open Up Skiplagged To Litigation
If I were running Skiplagged, I’d be quite concerned about unleashing this new change.
Think about international fares, for example. Often you can save hundreds of dollars by adding an extra segment to Canada. But many Americans, due to past convictions, are not allowed into Canada. Warning people to bring a passport along is really insufficient. Skiplagged better make sure it still provides a higher degree of specificity when it comes to international hidden city ticketing.
Even the warnings for domestic fares are not ideal. This is the general warning Skiplagged displays for domestic fares:
For a novice traveler, it really fails to adequately warn of the risks, setting Skiplagged up for potential liability. If there is a weather or mechanical problem, there is a strong chance you will be re-routed directly to your “destination” or via a different city. Telling customers to “ask to be changed to a similar itinerary” is really like telling the customer to do something they likely cannot do.
Furthermore, Skiplagged’s failure to show all-in pricing from the first results page is tantamount to the hotel resort fee game. I call the booking fee a “scam” not because there is a booking fee or even because it is $35, but because it is not shown until the final booking page. This is unacceptable and likely violates the U.S. Department of Transportation’s airline ticketing disclosure rules.
A Better Fee Model For Skiplagged
I want Skiplagged to succeed and applaud what it is doing to circumvent airline-imposed restrictions and expose consumers to other booking options. After so many years of providing this information for free, I understand it wants to keep a share of the savings it passes on to customers for itself.
But if Skiplagged goes down that path, I hope it will consider a subscription option instead. I think many would happily pay to have access to this kind of metasearch data. I would. I know I can use ITA Matrix to find it myself, but Skiplagged makes it easy. But I’m not willing to book a ticket to a destination I don’t know. There’s too much uncertainty in that.
CONCLUSION
Skiplagged is not for me personally, but certainly for many more casual travelers who don’t check bags or value loyalty programs and may wish to save literally hundreds of dollars on their airfare. But it is reasonable to want to know what you getting into before you do so and hiding critical flight details to extract a $35 booking fee is the wrong approach. Therefore, I hope that Skiplagged will consider other revenue models, like a subscription fee, before plowing ahead with displaying only partial search results.
Why on earth would anyone pay a subscription fee for something that both the operator of the service and you admit shouldn’t be done regularly? I total get the website wanting a cut of your saving for their effort versus letting everyone book with Google flights. A booking fee per use… especially when you are saving the customer money upfront, seems perfectly reasonable. I’d like to see it before checkout too, but I’ll gladly eat $35 bucks if I just saved $100.
I get that, but I use Skiplagged quite often for others (at least to research options) and I consider the service valuable. I’d pay for it like I pay for ExeprtFlyer.
But I’m simply not willing to do a blind booking where I have no idea of the ultimate destination when the service fee is non-refundable (even if the ticket can be canceled within 24 hours). I think the whole process is ripe for litigation as well…that’s a different issue and not my concern, but should be for Skiplagged.
Of course, I can always find it myself with enough time by playing around on ITA Matrix, but it’s not worth my time.
I don’t really get the ‘you are risking your FF miles ‘ angle. Surely you can just credit the flights to a different FFP? I somehow can’t see Asiana or TAP caring about whether you flew all segments on a ticket marketed and flown by UA. Unless of course you’re saying that UA may be able to triangulate the information and catch you out (I think that might be illegal in the EU but I appreciate the US isn’t too hot on data protection) .
No reason to dump measly mileage amounts to another FFP when flying skip lagged itineraries. Like Matthew, I’m held hostage because I’m working on my 3rd million mile marker to a single FFP. At the risk of saving $35 bucks for service fee and a few extra for skip lagging, I’d rather have the airline take the revenue and gamble on an upgrade.
If you have status, it’s better to show up at the gate after the connecting flight has pushed back for taxi/takeoff. Then ask ground staff to rebook for next day. Or tell them you’ll drive a rental car to the ticketed destination. Don’t bother to show up for that subsequent flight.
Good point. I suppose the question remains though – does Matthew (or indeed anyone else) think that one runs the risk of losing their FFP account as a result of bookings that haven’t been associated with it?
I do. I am petrified of ever trying this with United, even if I put in my AC or TK number because I could still lose my status and a considerable number of miles. The fear may be irrational, but it is not worth even the thousands per year I could probably save (since I tend to fly hub-to-hub and these fares are expensive).
I don’t think your fear is irrational at all. Any time you start playing around with violations of terms, the company could very easily yank your status/miles. I don’t see them afraid of upsetting other “valued customers” either. You, me, and most others would probably just think, “Well, he broke the rules.”
Keep playing it straight, Matthew.
Why are shorter layovers more risky if you’re not intending to take the next flight?
If your first flight is delayed slightly but you have a very short connection, you might be proactively (sometimes automatically) rebooked. Having a longer layover leaves room for more breathing room in the case of your first flight (to your intended destination) being delayed.
Wouldn’t automatically rebooking a passenger on a flight that is late, but still operating, be an IDB? I can’t think of a time this has ever happened to me.
Airline COCs say you buy a ticket from A to B – there is no protection for the layover point. Practically, it is a very small and rare problem, but it’s sort of like seat assignments: your routing is not guranteed.
I have used hidden city flights for over twenty years. In fact it used to work well in Europe when booking to places in J like BUD or other Eastern European cities via FRA. You would save far more than a few hundred dollars. In many cases I saved thousands on a J ticket and just got off in my intended of Frankfurt.
But these are easy to find with a few random looks at flights via Kayak etc. No need to use a service that is clearly going to be (or already is) flagged as a booking agent specializing in it. That’s just adding to the potential of being caught.
FYI, Cairo and Amman are the new sweet spot hidden cities. Usually good deals via Europe if you don’t need to check bags.
And Matthew, the responses they had to you seemed rather defensive and verging on hostile. I will never trust a company that responds in such a manner. No matter how much they are challenged.
Skiplagged was reasonable in its responses. You were snarky with your claims of their being horrible, misery, and a scam.
Is that you Aktarer?
LOL not me, I’m just now reading your article after getting a google alert. We have a team of people running A/B tests with the goal of improving the overall experience. For this specific test, people actually seem to prefer not seeing the irrelevant flights. Makes sense when you consider that 99.9% of our hidden-city bookings are successful!
Thanks for reading and please understand how much I admire your work, how you’ve stood up to United and Southwest, and how you’ve created a compelling product that does help thousands of people each day save hundreds of dollars on flights.
I hope you can see that my comments were not in pettiness, but of genuine concern as a frequent user. You’ve cetainly earned the right to more greatly monetize your excellent product.
There is no honor among thieves.
You all but admitted you use their service to find the best hidden city flights, and then go book direct. Sounds like you are try to justify disintermediation.
I like how you conveniently left off the tweets at you where you got roasted to make it seem like Skiplagged was being snarky as you purposely picked a fight with them.
I included all my tweets. I could not care less about how the peanut gallery responded.
Looks like all the focus is on protecting frequent flier miles.
However, the airline could develop a “bad boy” list for skiplagging. The PAX would be required to make direct contact with Customer Service in order to complete the booking. This could scare off the light hearted in this endeavor.
That is why people are encouraged not to do it often. It is reasonable to believe that people who skiplag once or very infrequently have few if any problems. That said I understand that those who make a habit out of skiplagging and do so frequently can and sometimes do get in trouble with the airline. In cases where a passenger skiplags infrequently maybe he suddenly developed a “bug” during his layover and was “indisposed” and missed his connection.