A few weeks ago United Airlines pursued a customer regarding hidden-city ticket offenders to recover cash and ward off future behavior. At least in my case, the tactic worked a charm.
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United Threatens Customer
Matthew covered a situation with United whereby a reader of another blog had received a letter stating that they had taken 38 hidden-city tickets and needed to settle up for what he should have paid for the tickets he flew.
I argued both that the passenger doesn’t owe United a dime, but also the inverse that United (while they shouldn’t do exercise it) has every right to collect from their customer. Interestingly and separate from this, Spanish courts have recently sided with my primary argument which could have a rippling effect across Europe.
Perfect Situation for a Hidden-City Trip
Ahead of a flight from Newark to Manila (via Narita and Guam), I needed a positioning flight from Pittsburgh. Hidden-city prices showed a round trip on the flight times I needed for $178 round-trip. Booked as United intended, the price would jump to $400+ and, just for kicks, each direction one-way topped $500+ (yes more expensive than the roundtrip). Cool United, I wonder why customers are trying to circumvent your pricing structure.
This would be an ideal situation in which to book a Hidden-city (skiplagged.com) ticket. The carrier is willing to sell space on the short, 47-minute flight from Pittsburgh to Newark and then another two-plus hours to Tampa for a fraction of the highway robbery they are charging if booked as a normal roundtrip.
If there was ever a case for booking a Hidden-city ticket, that would have been the one.
Not Going to Do It
While my United Mileage Plus balance will pale in comparison to much of our readership here at Live And Let’s Fly, it’s enough that I don’t want to part with it. I haven’t found a second example where United has pursued a customer with such vigor, nor have I been able to confirm that anything besides the letter ever came of the issue.
While I think that their legal claim would be hard to enforce, and I disagree with the very presence of such restrictions on a ticket I purchase, I am still not going to take the chance. It’s not worth the paperwork.
My Trust of United Falters
I have found that my trust in a brand significantly factors into my purchase decisions. I am fairly confident that IHG won’t upgrade me (because they hate their elites) and that Hyatt will, so I stay with Hyatt – even if they can’t upgrade me, I trust them to try. After an extensive pursuit of SPG to start the year, I found that the Marriott merger (and their suspect leadership) have soured the brand. I haven’t stayed with them in over six months, not even an award night.
Customers should follow a vendors rules, even if the vendor can’t really do much to pursue them. If the sign says “customers-only” on the bathroom door, buy something small and comply. But if that vendor decides to send those who were not customers and used the bathroom to collections, well, now I don’t really trust the brand to make logical business decisions.
Maybe I am foolish, but I feel like there are some that would have booked hidden-city tickets and not known they were doing something wrong. While the guy who booked hidden-city tickets 38 times probably had a clear idea of what he was doing, I could see plenty of people stumbling on to the principle of hidden-city ticketing and booking with impunity. How can you trust a brand that threatens their customers when their customers may not have even known they were doing something wrong? Who reads a 20+ page contract of carriage before they buy a ticket? No one. It doesn’t mean that other companies don’t do this (I am looking at you Apple ToS team) but the pursuit of customers for a debt for tickets they never agreed to purchase erodes any brand trust that might have lingered.
At least, in this case, United’s tactic has scared me out of booking hidden-city tickets, but it has also pushed me further from the brand.
How about you? Do you book hidden-city tickets? Has United’s action changed your position on the matter? Do you think the US will follow Europe’s lead?
For such a short flight you might as well just book it without being logged into to mileage plus, use a different credit card to the normal one you use for buying united tickets, and dont retroactively claim the miles or anything. Saves the cash, hard to find. If you are only doing it once or twice a year they wont find you anyway.
Something to consider.
Check out Amtrak (Pennsylvanian train) if you are open to enjoying a train ride through the Pennsylvania back country. You would get off at Newark Pemn (I don’t think it stops at EWR) then take NJ transit to the airport or Uber.
Unfortunately for me that would add far too much time.
It takes a little longer, but I would also consider renting a car one-way. Pricing depends on the day, of course, but I just got a quote of $148.43 all in from Hertz for next Saturday. Google Maps estimates 5 hours 40 minutes for the drive, not terrible compared to 1 hour 25 minutes plus time to arrive early at PIT for a flight.
I’d then need a return one-way, plus you’d have to factor in gas cost too. It would probably be cheaper to drive my own vehicle and park, but the issue is that my time is then consumed for 11 hours instead of letting someone else do the piloting. I can work on emails, take phone calls, etc.
But not a bad thought generally, we do this sometimes especially out of IAD – four hours away.
Book with a spelling mistake in name and no MP details.
I like this idea, but I know I shouldn’t.
Spelling mistake on your name, not matching your ID, you could be denied boarding by the TSA or the gate agent if TSA has been on their case.
In error I have made this mistake before and not had an issue, on purpose I would be pretty nervous though.
Maybe you could put a period after your name or something, lol.
Should be fine at security but might prevent a back-end system from matching it up with your other activity
per tsa misspelling only 1 letter can pass
ja,try to go to tge and pass tsa with and id that does not much the tkt,not very smart
IANAL but IIRC ignorance of the law is not an excuse. Of course, one might concoct a variety of defenses in the alternative but the contract is crystal clear: no point beyond ticketing.
If I had to guess, I’d say these letters go out at least once a week but I don’t have any evidence to support that claim. Here’s another example. https://imgur.com/DtGbf0b
Interesting image, SK7.
Disrespect of customers is not an excuse on the other side either. I would like someone to present a cogent, factual (not speculative bs answering) why the hidden city thing is even a thing. Pay for two trips, take only one… not getting it.
Because that’s how airline tickets are priced. Something tells me that if you buy one of those crazy priced international trips where the fare is like $7 for a 5000 mile trip you are t going to be saying “but but but, this doesn’t make sense, I should pay MORE….”
If you don’t take your spot on the plane, it goes empty and the airline cannot sell it to someone willing to pay for it.
Let’s take this to an extreme: Suppose everybody on the fight books it as hidden-city: You now have an empty plane traveling to a destination. Suppose you were a passenger trying to get to the final destination. You wouldn’t be able to get on the plane because it would show as completely booked even though it will be empty when it flies. It impacts not only the airline but also the passenger who would be in your seat if you had been honest about not being in it.
We can discuss why the airline jacks up the price for the shorter flight, but that doesn’t solve the problem of hidden-city booking. If you say you’re going to be in the seat, the airline is using that information to manage other passengers. By deliberately not showing up, it throws everything off. Your ticket purchase to the listed final destination impacts demand statistics which is used to plan future routing. If a lot of people buy tickets from A to C passing though B, the airline might decide to start a non-stop route… which won’t get used as much as planned due to the hidden-city people disappearing from the flights. Which will be a cost to the airline and eventual removal of the route. This is bad for all concerned.
Yes, the big reason for booking hidden-city is the cost savings. If the airlines charged a more reasonable price for the shorter journey, the passengers wouldn’t try to game the system. But gaming the system still causes problems.
Who cares tho if u are or are not in the seat. You PAID for it, am I right?
Airlines have a method to handle this. It’s why flights are always overbooked; they have systems designed around calculating how much to overbook. It’s needed, something comes up, and people miss a flight. While people doing this exacerbates the overbooking problem there’s an easier solution of fixing the pricing problem. It would be interesting to see this case go to court. No attorney in their right mind is going to let their client be sued if there was no financial loss. United would have to prove that they were unable to fill those seats or that filling them after the fact was at a lower cost. The last time I flew a third of the plane could have not boarded, and the standby list would have covered it. Now I didn’t fly United but given their notoriety for bumping passengers I don’t think this resulted in many if even a single seat unfilled.
SK7, that person was doing it twice a month on exactly the same routes! so obvious! if you only do it infrequently you will be just fine.
What about luggage when you buy hidden city tix? How do you retrieve checked baggage when you deplane halfway?
You can’t check luggage. I rarely do anyway.
What if there is a weather problem and the airline books you on a different routing that does not include the hidden city?
This is absolutely a risk, though usually you can decline re-routes. It was another deterrent for me as my schedule was inelastic.
Kind of like renting a car for a week and bringing it back after 5 days and they charge you more. Does not seem right
spend more time driving or finding other way to same money,instead of scamming the Airline I can believe that a writter will consider this! shame on you
“scamming the Airline” Please, are we talking about the same airline that will bump people at will because they overbook? The same airline that employs accountants and attorneys whose only purpose is to try to lower their corporate taxes by using every loophole they possibly find? Wouldn’t that be “scamming” the country then?
In this case your hidden city wouldn’t work anyway for the way back. As soon as you don’t show up for the Ewr to Tampa trip your return ticket would be canceled. I hope the Spanish case sets a precedent and the usa adopts it too. If a customer can find a cheaper way to get a somewhere what’s wrong with that? Because it violates a one way contract of carriage that the average customer has no choice but to accept? Someone in government needs to look at the airlines contract of carriage and enforce some common sense.
I agree that some common sense should come into play and that the government should match this from Spain. However, to clarify, one would not book a round trip but rather two one-way segments.
Like anything would make me feel sorry for legacy domestic airlines.
Very simple solution, don’t put in your MP # and use a different credit card than usual… Throw in a middle name if you have on but don’t usually use one.
For such a short flight, the miles don’t matter. The savings DO!
Wimp! I would’ve done it in a heartbeat. 😉
domestic HCT are already easy to pull off. Very recently, I flew a HCT involving
AAA (tiny regional airport) – BBB (western fortress hub) -[red eye] – CCC (east coast) – DDD (some airport in Caribbean)
and the agent at AAA asked me “do you have a return ticket from the island” hahhahahha
Your comments on IHG and Hyatt are spot on. We find ourselves all-in with Hyatt for precisely the reason you state.
(Although IC Bordeaux does upgrade. And no Hyatts there.)