A young computer whiz from New York City has launched a site to help people buy cheap plane tickets. But an airline company and its travel partner want to shut him down.
The idea is that you buy an airline ticket that has cheap jerseys a layover at your actual destination. Say you want to fly from New York to San Francisco you actually book a flight from New York to Lake Tahoe with a layover in San Francisco and get off there, without bothering to take the last leg of the flight.
This travel strategy only works if you book a one way flight with no checked bags (they would have landed in Lake Tahoe).
It not like these tickets are the cheapest all the time, but they often are.
In the lawsuit, United and Orbitz call Skiplagged competition and allege that it is promoting prohibited travel. They want to recoup $75,000 in lost revenue from Zaman.
Zaman said he knew a lawsuit was inevitable but he points out that there nothing illegal about his web site.
He also said he http://www.cheapjerseys11.com/ has made no profit via the website and that all he done is help travelers get the best prices by exposing an in airline prices that insiders have known about for decades.
city ticketing] have been around for a while, it just hasn been very accessible to consumers, Zaman told CNNMoney.
Indeed, city, ticketing is no secret among frequent fliers, said Michael Boyd, President of Boyd Group International, an aviation consulting firm in Evergreen, Co. Boyd worked as an American Airline ticket agent 30 years ago, and says he was trained at the airline to help customers find city fares.
don think it illegal what he doing, Boyd said. But lawsuits are expensive and it could end up costing the young entrepreneur who has irked the two billion dollar corporations.
Airlines usually offer cheaper fares for some destinations that are not regional hubs, Boyd said. Many of these flights are routed through more popular destinations. But if a lot of people take advantage of that discrepancy it could hurt the airlines, which is why they want to shut him down. He lives in Manhattan and works at a technology start up that he declined to name.
Zaman said Skiplagged is just a project. and United declined to discuss the lawsuit. Orbitz said in a statement that it is obligated to uphold airline fare rules.
Other travel experts say that the airlines may not achieve much if Zaman site is shut down, especially in a world where information is becoming more readily available.
Technically, whenever one buys an airline ticket, you must agree to that carriers of carriage. You see it near the end of the purchase process. Every contract of carriage prohibits this behavior, and many airlines use tracking systems to determine individuals who do this often and many times will void their right to fly on the airline. While not strictly illegal from a legal standpoint, it is expressly breaking a contract and is subject to the airline taking the issue to court on those grounds. Some airlines simply strip all accrued miles from accounts and blacklist the passenger. Is it wrong? Well, airline margins are some of the thinnest in any major industry. A couch class ticket between Dublin Ireland and JFK was $7,000 in today money in the 1960 Now I can find an economy fare for less than $1000 easily. Airlines struggle to break a 5% margin, and this doesn help. So when we complain about legroom and the lack of snacks and baggage fees, people who break contracts of carriage designed to protect what slim margins airlines already have, are part of the problem.
Source I fly globally for work and spend more time in airplanes and airports than most people spend at work.