What is Skiplagging
This summer we almost encouraged our daughter to try skiplagging when she needed to get to North Carolina for a wedding. It would have saved her both time and money. However, we were worried that it might be illegal.
So we did some more research on what skiplagging is all about. Thus this article.
What is Skiplagging?
Skiplagging is a controversial travel hack that has been gaining popularity in recent years. It involves booking a flight with a layover and getting off at the layover airport instead of continuing to the final destination. This method can potentially save travelers money, but it comes with risks and legal implications.
The practice of skiplagging has been around for decades. You may have heard about it when it was called hidden city ticketing. That grew in popularity when airlines were heavy into hub-and-spoke flights and there were fewer direct and affordable options. Not that there are more of them today — there are probably fewer because there are fewer airlines overall.
Why we considered skiplagging
As I mentioned my daughter considered trying skiplagging. You see she needed to get to Asheville, North Carolina, from her home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
When she first looked at flights, there were direct, non-stop flights between the two destinations. However, because she waited to book, none of them were available anymore. So, she would have to fly through Charlotte, North Carolina on both legs of the trip.
Out of curiosity, she looked at fares to fly from Pittsburgh to Charlotte, where her friends could pick her up and drive her to Asheville. These PIT to CLT flights were double what the flight was, connecting in Charlotte and then heading to Asheville.
Since she would have a free ride from the airport either way, she wondered if it was worth it to book the PIT to CLT to AVL (airport code for Asheville) but get off in Charlotte to save the money.
Eventually, she decided not to do that because she was buying a roundtrip ticket. She was worried that if she hadn’t shown up for the last leg of the inbound flight, the airline might cancel the remaining portion of her ticket.
Getting in trouble with the airlines
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That wasn’t just her anxiety talking. It was a real risk, as this New York Post article reports.
You see, a teen was trying to fly to Charlotte, North Carolina (ironically) from Florida. However, he discovered it was cheaper to book a flight from Florida to New York City — with a stopover or layover in Charlotte, where he would get off.
Well, he got caught, before he’d even left Florida, and it wasn’t pretty. His North Carolina drivers license tipped off American Airlines employees, the Post said. So, American Airlines canceled his ticket and banned him from flying with them for three years. Ouch.
Is Skiplagging illegal
No, skiplagging is not illegal. That is, you’re not breaking any laws if you choose to skiplag a flight.
However, this practice does go against most airlines’ terms and conditions. For instance, Delta Airlines doesn’t use the term skiplagging or hidden-city ticketing when describing prohibited practices. However, you get the idea from these bullet points I pulled off the Delta Airlines website of money-saving workarounds you might consider but which they prohibit:
“While not an exclusive list, the following ticketing practices are prohibited:
Delta Airlines
- Back-to-back ticketing – combining multiple overlapping round-trip tickets to circumvent Saturday or other overnight stay requirements
- Throw-away ticketing – use of discounted round-trip excursion fares for one-way travel
- Point-beyond ticketing – use of a fare published for travel to a point beyond your actual intended destination or from a point before your actual intended origin”
Also, you could end up in legal trouble. In 2014, United Airlines and Orbitz sued the website Skiplagged for promoting how to use Orbitz to find cheaper, hidden-city fares. While Orbitz eventually settled the suit, it just goes to show you the travel industry’s take on skiplagging — and the legal lengths they might go to get people to stop doing it.
When passengers prevail
In two instances overseas, passengers whom the airlines sued for skiplagging ended up prevailing in court.
According to the travel site Simple Flying, in 2016, a Spanish court ruled against Iberia Airlines and in favor of a passenger the airline had sued for skiplagging. The court found that the passenger did not violate any laws or contractual obligations since he had paid for the ticket and did not disrupt the airline’s operations.
Similarly, in 2019, The Points Guy, in an article headlined “A small victory for bargain hunters: Lufthansa drops lawsuit against ‘skiplagging’ passenger,” reported that a German court ruled that Lufthansa could not penalize a no-show passenger for skiplagging. Why? Because the airline failed to prove any damage or loss resulting from the passenger’s actions. That sounds eerily similar to the outcome of the Iberia Airlines case.
However, it is worth noting that legal precedents may vary by jurisdiction and case. For instance, maybe courts in the European Union are more passenger-centric and that’s why people prevailed in those cases in Germany and Spain. Still, skiplagging has risks and consequences, such as that aforementioned teen from North Carolina learned.
It sucks to have American Airlines ban you when you live in Charlotte, North Carolina. That’s because American has a major hub at that airport.
Overall, I would not recommend trying to skiplag on a flight — especially if you ever want to get a travel refund from an airline. And I’m glad my daughter came to the same conclusion as well.
The portmanteau skiplagged
Portmanteau means when you combine two words to make a new word that perfectly describes something. For example, brunch is a portmanteau of breakfast and lunch. Hangry (which I’ve been known to get) combines hungry and angry. And if you’re ever dealt with someone who is hangry, you understand the connotation completely.
But, when thinking about the portmanteau skiplagged, I’m confused. It sounds like it’s the combination of skipping and jet lagged, but this has nothing to do with being jet lagged. Really, a better portmanteau might have been skipover (although that sounds like jump rope) for skipping and layover.
I searched all over to figure out how we came up with the term skiplagged to replace hidden-city ticketing. If you know the portmanteau’s origins, please fill me in.