I'm about to put myself on some kind of unofficial no-fly list with this next statement, but here it goes.
What is so wrong with hidden city ticketing?
United and Orbitz made news this week by suing a little-known website named Skiplagged.com. This site has been promoting the practice, where you save a boatload of money getting to a destination by booking a flight with that destination as a stopover.
It's a concept I was oblivious to until this week. I'll admit it. I'm all for a bargain, so I'm pretty mad at myself for never having heard of this.
The two behemoths said in their lawsuit that the website is maliciously interfering with and undercutting their sales. It's quite the case of strange bedfellows, since airlines and OTAs have been at odds in the past over airline ticket distribution.
Eventually, the airlines and these airfare compilers figured out a way for everyone to work together - to the point that they're now suing an upstart that is threatening to upset their beautifully orchestrated fleecing of the airline traveler.
A site that is pretty difficult to even get to. For the 25 times I tried to get on to the site Friday, I got DNS server errors 19 times. When I got through, I noticed the site is very visual, but when I tried to click through and book one of the advertised deals, I was unable to make the booking.
The site has 520 Twitter followers. It's not exactly lighting up the social media marketing world.
So why are two gigantic travel brands going after the company? It's a PR battle neither company is going to win.
Airlines experienced an all-time high in customer satisfaction rankings this year, but still rank below the IRS and cable companies. This isn't a vote of confidence for airlines, simply the general public coming to the realization that all the things we used to get for free will never be free again.
JetBlue announced this week that they're falling in line with the industry and charging for bags. Gotta keep Wall Street happy.
The airline industry will make $50 billion in additional fees this year. United itself pulled off an epic quarter-to-quarter turnaround this year, largely thanks to all those fees - and not running their business quite as poorly as before. Charging $200 to rebook a cancelled flight or re-bank earned frequent flyer miles will turn around a balance sheet right quick.
This is an industry that is arguing about advertising proper airfares before fees. They think they should be able to dupe the consumer with a pre-fee fare, trying to put the bulk of the blame on the government for the fees.
Studies show examples of the OTAs charging different rates for different people. It's a business. You get what you can get, I get it. But don't try pleading poverty here.
This is just not the time to be pleading any kind of loss of business. The public is not going to buy it.
When I was finally able to get on Skiplagged, I tried a sample comparison. I clicked on the Pittsburgh to New York Dec. 22 offer they advertised. It was $92 to go one-way between cities on a Pittsburgh-to-Boston Logan fare that stops at LaGuardia.
The best fare I could find between Pittsburgh and New York on LaGuardia? $201.60.
My first thought? An expletive-filled rant against the airlines that can be PG-13 translated as "you slimy punks."
Why in the world am I paying two times as much for a flight that I could take by flying through another city?
There's a lot of money to be lost here if the concept of hidden city ticketing was ever to become mainstream, like Napster or bit-torrent movie downloading. Maybe the airlines fear they'll lose their business model just like the music industry has lost theirs.
But there's a big difference there. People found an easier way to get music and a quicker distribution model was born that killed the antiquated record label model.
You'll always have to take an airplane. It's just a matter of not being able to constantly get over on the air traveler.
The lawsuit complains that hidden city ticketing is strictly prohibited by most commercial airlines because of logistical and public safety concerns. Really?
Let's be honest. The only concern here is that someone has cracked the code. I don't know Aktarer Zaman, the owner of Skiplagged. If I did, I'd thank him for shedding some light on the cockroaches here. And then I'd tell him to fix his dang website.
I asked my friends if they'd ever heard of hidden city ticketing. Just two of the 26 people that replied to me said they knew about it - and again, we're talking about seasoned travelers. They're all kicking themselves that they didn't know about this before.
By going public with this lawsuit, United and Orbitz have introduced the idea to folks who never knew about it before. So now, the airlines and the OTAs are likely going to lose millions in folks trying the concept now and/or spend millions in trying to police those who will try it because they heard about it through the lawsuit.
Oh, and then there's the techies who will try to duplicate and improve upon what Zaman has built.
I never thought I'd see a day when gas prices would actually trend down again but analysts are actually saying that this sub-$3-per-gallon trend could become a new reality. The oil companies' record profits may finally take a hit thanks to slipping demand.
Airfares aren't going down though with the lower gas prices, thanks to boardroom greed. Airlines are saving hundreds of millions of dollars per week, but why pass that savings on to the consumer?
"In a strong demand environment, we don't plan to go off and just proactively cut fares," American Airlines president Scott Kirby told investors earlier this year.
At least there's been light shed now on a borderline corrupt pricing structure. Hackers, hack away. They might say it's prohibited but until they get a judge to call it illegal, they'll lose a lot of money and what little goodwill they have left by trying to prevent travelers from getting the lowest fare they can.
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