Finding a great flight deal often involves diligently tracking and setting price alerts, comparing miles or points programs, signing up for new credit cards, flying out of an inconvenient airport at an inconvenient time, and more.
Some travelers will go further by booking connections and sometimes even purposely skipping them. This workaround, called skiplagging or hidden-city flying, means purchasing an itinerary with a layover that is the intended destination and skipping the last leg of a flight. Some travelers will employ this tactic when it’s cheaper than buying a direct flight.
Aktarer Zaman founded a website called Skiplagged in 2013 to help travelers unearth these deals. Skiplagging, however, is prohibited by airlines, and carriers will occasionally punish travelers who do it, clawing back frequent flier mileage and even suing passengers. United Airlines, American Airlines and Southwest Airlines have sued Mr. Zaman’s company over the years, and a lawsuit filed by American is ongoing.
But in a conversation with The Times, Mr. Zaman, 32, said more than 12 million people have used his website in the last 12 months. He said that skiplagging offers significant value to cost-conscious travelers and he’s invigorated to empower them.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
How did you initially discover the price savings that can come with intentionally skipping flights?
Initially, it was just curiosity. I’d just graduated from college, had a job lined up at Amazon in Seattle and was looking up flights from New York City. I saw that it was half the price to fly from New York to Seattle, with a layover in San Francisco, than to fly directly from New York to San Francisco. I then went into a rabbit hole trying to understand what was going on.
Airlines operate on a hub-and-spoke model, which means they price on market and not by distance. It’s been like this for decades. So in this example, the airline had a strong control over the New York-to-San Francisco market, but maybe not over the New York-to-Seattle market.
I wanted to see, as an engineer, if I could create a program to help me efficiently find these fares. Before Skiplagged, it was kind of difficult to find.
During the day, I was working at Amazon, and during the nights, I was working on this. I launched the site in September 2013. A year and a half later, I was sued by United Airlines and Orbitz, and the lawsuit brought way more media attention and consumer exposure and interest. The user numbers grew and I felt like there was a huge demand for my product. I quit Amazon to focus full-time on Skiplagged.
Did you coin the term ‘skiplagged’?
Credit goes to my younger sister — and Selena Gomez.
My sister was 12 at the time, obsessed with Selena, and had just seen her post on Twitter about being jet lagged from flying a lot.
My sister suggested “skiplagged” because people would now be skipping flights a lot. I bought the skiplagged.com domain a few days later.
Is your company an online travel agency? How does Skiplagged make money?
The site shows you hidden-city flights, flights other companies will show you and other travel hacks, but the sellers of tickets are either the airlines or travel agencies. We work with big companies like Priceline and other travel companies, and pass along customer information but we don’t actually do any of the ticketing.
The information is what people come for — most of them are just getting information and price comparison. But some want to book through our platform and we might charge a small service fee, anywhere from $0 to $35, or we might send the user to a travel vendor that we work with, who then will give us like commission if there is a sale. So that’s how we stay sustainable. It’s enough that we can continue to run the business and stay profitable.
Growing up, what was your family’s approach to travel?
My first flight was in 1997, when I came to America from Bangladesh. I was 5 years old. Growing up, I flew two more times to see family in Bangladesh but we didn’t go on vacations. For us, money was hard to come by.
I understand the impacts of small amounts of money. That is one of the driving motivators around Skiplagged. The average person benefiting from Skiplagged quite literally saves almost 50 percent of their ticket price.
How frequently do you think others skiplag? Is it a real threat to airlines?
Every month, about 25,000 people are skiplagging through our platform. We tell people not to do it too often with the same airline.
I don’t agree at all that the airlines are losing money. It’s very possible these sales wouldn’t have happened otherwise. And let’s not forget that these travelers are actually paying for both the segments, what they’re flying and what they’re skipping.
Could airlines close this loophole, if they wanted to?
Yes, it’s their own prices that allow this.
If they want to shut down skiplagging, they could do it tomorrow. One way to do it would be reducing airfare to hub cities. The reason the price is so high because they control this market and want to maximize their profits. It’s the reason hidden cities even exist.
Three major carriers have sued your company. And recently, though the final judgment isn’t in, a federal jury ordered Skiplagged to pay American Airlines $9.4 million for copyright infringement. How serious is this?
It could have destroyed us. But we won everything we needed to win that allowed us to continue to operate the business as is. The trial was about copyright, or their logo, and trademark, or their name. The lawsuit has no effect on whether we can do business.
When you analyze the details, it’s actually a huge victory for Skiplagged.
And the $9.4 million award isn’t final. There are several months in procedural phases left.
Do you think skiplagging is here to stay? Is it ethical?
It’s not nearly as risky as its made out to be.
I think ethics are a personal decision. Is this pricing even ethical? It’s motivated by profit. Skiplagged is all about giving travelers options and empowering people.
The post Airlines Hate ‘Skiplagging.’ Meet the Man Who Helps Travelers Pull It Off. appeared first on New York Times.
