Teenager detained at airport after trying to use “skiplagging” trick

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12289667/Teenager-DETAINED-airport-trying-use-skip-lagging-trick.html

by pessimizer • 3 years ago

73 78 3 years ago

dailymail.co.uk

He must have said something stupid to tsa. Or just really unlucky.

conk• 3 years ago

“We've used Skiplagged almost exclusively for the last five to eight years” Seems trivial to flag people who frequently use this trick. Or just flag based upon resident address.

addisonl• 3 years ago

Or just allow your customers to buy your flights at the price you are (already) selling them at.

Supermancho2• 3 years ago

A ticket desk noticed his Driver's License and deduced. Probably an existing policy to look out for this kind of shortcut and a brownie point awarded. Not sure why a reasonable person would turn this kid in or how it would otherwise be discovered.

throw9away62• 3 years ago

Ticket desk? What decade are we talking about? The only ticket desk is if you check bags everyone else has a printed boarding pass you go straight to tsa. The folks at the airplane gate don’t look at id and are rushing everyone in.

realitythreek• 3 years ago

How was this legal? Missing a connecting flight means you’re detained and forced to buy a new ticket? Dispute that charge for not providing service as paid for.

pylua• 3 years ago

Right how is that not kidnapping ?

hayd• 3 years ago

"Dispute that charge" they refunded the ticket.

There really needs to be punitive damages.

That prices are higher for a partial flight is the criminal aspect here.

hn_throwaway_993• 3 years ago

One clarification - he wasn't detained in Charlotte, he was questioned in Florida before he got on the first leg of his flight. The gate agents then canceled his full itinerary and made him buy a full fair ticket to Charlotte.

The reason this happened is because adults intimidated a child. If it were me, I would have told them to fuck off, sure that I was planning to go to NYC, and oh crap I'd unexpectedly get food poisoning in Charlotte and had to stay there.

Airlines are trying to have their cake and eat it, too, with their BS fare games. If they don't want people "skiplagging" they should price their tickets accordingly.

hn_throwaway_993• 3 years ago

God, I despise how much bullshit corporations will try to convince the populace that something is somehow morally wrong when all it does is make them less money:

1. Even the name "skiplagging" sounds similar to the invented crime of "jaywalking" to me - jaywalking a crime famously invented by US car companies to take control of our roads.

2. "At the gate, however, Logan's North Carolina ID raised red flags with the agent and the teen was subsequently taken to a security room and interrogated, Hunter said." I would be livid if I were this kid's parents. They're trying to treat their BS way to make more money as a crime.

In short, airlines are fucking around and I hope they find out.

rootusrootus• 3 years ago

the invented crime of "jaywalking" to me - jaywalking a crime famously invented by US car companies to take control of our roads

That's a popular explanation, but this dictionary explanation suggests the origin isn't so sinister.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/why-is-it-call...

notsound• 3 years ago

While interesting, this is just the word's origin; the comment you're responding to is claiming that the auto industry made jaywalking a crime. That claim seems to be based in fact: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26073797

janalsncm2• 3 years ago

Maybe you missed the memo, but the American hierarchy of political concern is:

1. Corporations

2. Small businesses

3. Homeowners

4. Consumers

5. If you’re not one of the above, you’re lower than dirt.

impissedoff1• 3 years ago

Small businesses get absolutely fucked...

renewiltord• 3 years ago

Jaywalking is quite reasonably allowed in California, interestingly.

b33j0r• 3 years ago

To say nothing of jay-motorcycling on the interstate!

gnicholas2• 3 years ago

Eh, a friend of mine got a ticket for jaywalking in downtown Westwood, when no cars were around.

gruez8• 3 years ago

1. Even the name "skiplagging" sounds similar to the invented crime of "jaywalking" to me - jaywalking a crime famously invented by US car companies to take control of our roads.

I think you're really reaching here. While "jaywalking" can be construed as having a negative connotation ("jay" means "a dull or ignorant person"), the same can't be said for "skiplagging" which so far as I can tell doesn't contain any negative connotations. (ie. "skip" from skipping a particular leg, and "lagged" in reference to "leg" or "jetlag". Moreover, there's literally a site called skiplagged.com that helps people find tickets. If they're trying to demonize the term, they're doing a really bad job.

adhesive_wombat2• 3 years ago

skiplagging.... costs airlines tens of thousands in lost revenue

That's some unrealised-gain bullshit logic that would make a crypto-bro blush.

Airlines cost me millions, millions I say!, per day in lost revenue because they very unfairly do not wire me 10% of their income every day as I think they should.

0xfedbee• 3 years ago

Hahahahs

gruez8• 3 years ago

> skiplagging.... costs airlines tens of thousands in lost revenue
That's some unrealised-gain bullshit logic that would make a crypto-bro blush.

I agree that the logic for equating potential lost sales as actual lost revenue is flawed, but in this case the numbers are very conservative, and thus entirely plausible. Apparently there are more than 4 billion flights per year pre pandemic[1], so "tens of thousands" (50k?) in actual losses (ie. cases where someone bought the cheaper ticket, and would have otherwise purchased the more expensive ticket) seems like an absolute certainty.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/564717/airline-industry-...

rhn_mk1• 3 years ago

The people coming to the bakery this morning cost me 1k in actual losses (ie. cases where someone bought the bread directly from the bakery but would have otherwise purchased the bread from me at 3 times the price).

ajhurliman• 3 years ago

Actions like this are a mark of a company with excess staff. If someone is so bored that they took it upon themselves to require someone ride on a second leg of a trip, there’s probably some bloat in their org.

And how are they claiming they lost money due to skip lagging? If anything they’d gain money on the smaller amount of fuel needed for the second leg because he wasn’t on it.

The word kafkaesque becomes more relevant every day.

deafpolygon• 3 years ago

They count it as lost money basically by saying that since there was an empty seat on the second leg (despite the fact that it was already paid-for by ticket) - therefore counting that against potential profit.

It's bullshit accounting to spin things in their favor.

NikkiA• 3 years ago

The family looks well off (and clearly flies a lot), so this is a tough one as to which way it'll go; probably AA will back down after a while, and then lobby/bribe congress to make it illegal.

gruez8• 3 years ago

then lobby/bribe congress to make it illegal.

Why would they need to do that? It already violates the terms of carriage, which is illegal (albeit only civilly).

dbg31415• 3 years ago

I used this trick when I was his age! Never had any issues. Saved a bunch of money.

Only way to get caught is to offer the details up. He had to have told the agents the wrong city or something like that.

Anyway it’s a great trick to shave a few bucks off your flight. And let’s be honest, they would do it to you if the situation was reversed. They 100% would.

NoZebra120vClip5• 3 years ago

Come on, this is low-grade fraud, and even if airlines did not "lose money" it would still have the potential for headaches and confusion in a cascade effect.

When I book an airline ticket, I'm making a contract that says "I'm paying you to transport my person and belongings from Point A to Point B to Point C with these details." Now unless I cancel or modify that reservation, the airline is expecting me to follow through, because I'm monetarily invested.

What are the consequences of missing my flight? My name will be on the manifest and the airline will wonder what happened to me. They probably won't file a missing persons report, but their records will note that I had a flight but I wasn't on it.

So what if I've done some "hidden city ticketing" and the aircraft on the last leg crashes? My friends and family, and first responders, might wonder where I am at that point. Was I on the flight? Did I miss it? Why would I miss the last leg of a multipoint flight?

What if I am "hidden city ticketing" to another country? Isn't that going to get sticky with immigration? I mean, I fly to Spain and then Istanbul, and my airline continues on to Kazakhstan, but I'm hanging out at the Hagia Sophia. What are the Kazakhstani authorities gonna say about my visa plans or however I faked out everybody and made them believe I was going there? Isn't Turkey going to have something to say about my continued presence when I never should've left the airport?

Logistically, it must really mess up the airlines' planning and operations. If people get in the habit of reserving seats they don't intend to fart in, then that's a capacity problem. Passengers gonna get bumped. Imagine a whole 737 full of "hidden city ticketer" seats that doesn't even bother departing.

Yeah, I get it, passengers save money. Solve the fare imbalance somehow, airlines! Obviously if hackers are hacking you then you need a mitigation, and it's bad optics for you to detain and interrogate a script kiddie, such that he makes a headline on the Daily Fail. COVID-19 hurt us all; suck it up.

wildrhythms• 3 years ago

It's not fraud. I get what you're saying with the operational concern trying to locate an unaccompanied minor who was supposed to be at the gate and is now 'missing'. But he paid the price the airline posted for the ticket. Who got defrauded?

NoZebra120vClip5• 3 years ago

The passenger asserts at booking that "I will be at the boarding gate before the plane leaves because I intend to occupy seat X on your aircraft" but that's a lie, because they have no such intention to board the aircraft. That's the fraud, and that's why it's low-grade, because people miss flights accidentally for numerous reasons, this is just a deliberate missing of a flight, and taking away resources from someone else who should have them. Although overbooking, bumping, and standby are all policies in place to deal with the inevitable missed flights, whatever their reason.

tomberin• 3 years ago

This isn’t how any of this works. Manifests are built at boarding, visas work at entry. You are inventing problems to take the side of a corporation.

NoZebra120vClip5• 3 years ago

https://youtu.be/Aq_1l316ow8

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF3• 3 years ago

Honestly, I didn’t read their comment as taking any sides; it’s really just descriptive of their perspective. There are good arguments for why this is fraud in a particular way and another commenter in this thread pointed out (correctly, in my opinion) that “overbooking” is a similar kind of fraud on the airlines’ part.

Point being, many happenings are more nuanced than Alice wronged Bob and Bob did nothing wrong to Alice. I suspect if you read the parent comment again you may indeed find some of their points to be agreeable.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF3• 3 years ago

Solve the fare imbalance somehow, airlines!

This is a pretty agreeable take except the seeming implication that any “skiplaggers” are doing something wrong. They really just (currently) play the airlines’ game better and the airlines are being over-sensitive about it.

The proper solution for this would be for the airlines to fix their pricing issues rather than to intimidate random passengers into paying the “correct” amount and pretend it was the individual passenger’s fault when they committed this supposed fraud.

horns4lyfe• 3 years ago

Are you an airline AI? What a crock.

scotty79• 3 years ago

Why indirect flight is cheaper than direct one to the intermediate destination. This should be illegal. It's a sign of some nefarious price fixing. No explanation from the airlines should be accepted for something like that.

balderdash2• 3 years ago

It’s not price fixing. It’s price discrimination. It’s not nice, but it’s a fundamental economic/pricing tenant (doesn’t excuse the airlines treatment of this boy).

CodeWriter233• 3 years ago

Doesn’t the airline actually save nominally on the connecting flight by not having to haul the kid’s weight and baggage? I get they don’t get the shakedown fare they want to charge but isn’t that really because they have inconsistent and unfair policies when it comes to setting fares?

balderdash2• 3 years ago

In no way defending the airline’s actions here, but in theory they are trying to price discriminate. From their perspective, would have probably preferred two nonstop fares at a higher price

netruk44• 3 years ago

It's slightly more than the missed revenue from the failed shakedown. An empty seat is a seat that could have been sold to someone who paid full price. If you hadn't checked in for the flight you weren't intending to take, they could have made a bit more money.

CodeWriter233• 3 years ago

*if the plane is full

adhesive_wombat2• 3 years ago

And yet they were so eager to pay the passenger (in the form of a discount) to block that seat on the second leg from being used by a hypothetical other paying customer, even though the passenger being paid to sit in the seat didn't actually want to.

qazxcvbnmlp• 3 years ago

Direct flights from A->B command a premium price. The reason the airline comes out money behind is that the person did not choose the pay that premium for the direct (or less stops) flight.

Generally the premium is higher than the increased cost of one more passenger on that last leg.

CodeWriter233• 3 years ago

Airlines be like:

Fly A -> B -> C: $200, Fly A -> B: $900

ktosobcy• 3 years ago

air travel pricing is weird AF. save from the direct vs connecting flight (as in this case), long haul, intercontinental flights are quite often to and return ticket priced quite similarly (it usually makes more sense to buy return then one way...)

janalsncm2• 3 years ago

I’m sure airlines will “solve” this “problem” by adding them to their no fly lists (or perhaps a flagged-but-not-yet-banned list). Unreliable and unruly passengers can and will be denied ticket sales. Airlines can and will share these lists amongst themselves for “safety” reasons and “to ensure the best service”.

quags• 3 years ago

On more than one flight in my life they have been over booked and need people to come to the counter and take whatever they are offering. One time out of key west Florida the airlines refused to start boarding until a few passengers took another flight.

RecycledEle• 3 years ago

What if we made airlines price tickets rationally, so that a flight from A to B was always cheaper than a flight from A to B then from B to C?

I'm sorry. I forgot who pays the bribes to Congress.

gruez8• 3 years ago

What if we made airlines price tickets rationally, so that a flight from A to B was always cheaper than a flight from A to B then from B to C?

It's entirely "rational" when you factor in price discrimination.

jameson712• 3 years ago

And if we are going to have a free market, then mooning the longer trip and getting off at your layover must be allowed

litoE• 3 years ago

Back in the day (I haven't checked lately) if you bought a round trip ticket from, say, LA-NY-LA, the price was significantly lower if you stayed in NY over the weekend because the airlines assumed that if you didn't stay for the weekend you were a business traveler who was writing off the expense while if you stayed over the weekend you were a cost-conscious tourist.

Clever people who needed to make two closely spaced round trips would book one ticket LA-NY-LA and a second ticket NY-LA-NY. They would fly out to NY on Monday on ticket #1, return home to LA on Friday using ticket #2, go back to NY the following Monday using ticket #2 and return to LA the following Friday using the second half of ticket #1. Both tickets stayed at their mid point over a weekend, so they paid the lower fare.

This was easy to do before airline security increased due to 9/11 because there were no TSA checkpoints (anyone remember when you could meet arriving passengers at the gate? and airlines didn't really check ID when boarding, so you could book the two tickets with a slight misspelling of your name and the agents at the gate would let you board.

redroyal• 3 years ago

Wait, this kid didn’t do anything illegal. They can’t detain him at airport security on behalf of the airline to resolve a civil matter and they definitely can’t legally force him to buy a direct ticket. He’s free to leave at any point in the trip and is certainty not obligated contractually to complete it. I’m pretty sure he can and should sue for being wrongfully detained and intimidated into paying twice for the same trip in order to set a precedent. Maybe we should even start a gofundme to help him do that

tremorscript• 3 years ago

I always learn something new on HN everyday :)

I didn't know this practice existed before today.

Now, I don't understand airline economics, but this seems to me like a pricing issue.

How can a direct flight be more expensive than a connecting that is over a larger distance and so more fuel cost? Its about risks.

TIL: -https://www.smartertravel.com/why-are-nonstops-more-expensiv...

dang• 3 years ago

Teenager ‘taken to security room and interrogated’ for throwaway ticketing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36684460 - July 2023 (151 comments)

healthyusa• 3 years ago

I was at 9/11. No, I don’t want passengers checking on, then never get back on.

jameson712• 3 years ago

What?

Teenager detained at airport after trying to use “skiplagging” trick

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