A website that promised consumers access to cheap airfares by exploiting a secret travel hack has been ordered to pay American Airlines nearly $10 million in compensation after a Texas jury found it guilty of infringing the Fort Worth-based carrier’s copyright.
The website is called Skiplagged, and, as the name suggests, it specializes in selling airfares using the so-called ‘skiplagging’ hack. Skiplagging is also known as ‘hidden city ticketing’ and involves booking a ticket to a destination that the consumer has no intention of traveling to but with a layover in their intended destination.
Because airlines often sell flights that require a layover for a lower price than non-stop flights, hidden-city ticketing has become a popular but risky way for consumers to save potentially hundreds of dollars in airfares.
When travelers use hidden city ticketing, they finish their journey at their layover destination and simply abandon the rest of their ticket. It’s a risky strategy because airlines can ban passengers or forfeit their frequent flyer miles and status if they are caught skiplagging.
Despite the risks, however, American Airlines accused Skiplagged of using bots to trawl its official website to display hidden city ticketing trips to consumers who were desperate to save money on airfares.
In a lawsuit filed in a Texas court last year, American Airlines alleged that New York-based Skiplagged illegally used AA’s trademarks to deceive consumers into believing that it had the authority to issue tickets.
Following a five-day trial, on Tuesday, jurors ordered Skiplagged to pay American Airlines $9.4 million in compensation, including $4.7 million in disgorgement from the travel site’s revenues and $4.7 million for copyright infringement.
The jury did not, however, award American Airlines any damages for trademark infringement.
Lawyers representing American Airlines had accused Skiplagged of using the carrier’s copyright to deceive consumers into believing that it was an authorized agent of the airline.
In reality, American Airlines despised the methods employed by Skiplagged to find consumers airfares that it marketed as being cheaper than non-stop flights.
It’s not as if Skiplagged didn’t know that its hidden city ticketing ploy couldn’t land consumers in hot water with American Airlines. According to the complaint filed by AA, Skiplagged would warn passengers to lie to the airline about their intended final destination and issued advice about what to do if they got caught.
In return for finding cheaper tickets, Skiplagged would charge a fee of around $10 per ticket, although American Airlines claims that the tickets that the website was promoting were often the same price that consumers would have ended up paying if they had booked a non-stop flight from the official AA website.
As a result, Skiplagged was accused of marketing cheaper tickets that were anything but.
Skiplagged was founded by former Amazon software engineer Aktarer Zaman, who initially started the website as a free service but quit his job to work on the project full-time when it grew in popularity.
Skiplagging isn’t illegal, but it is expressly forbidden by many airlines based on their carriage conditions. If caught, travelers can have any remaining flights terminated with little recourse and could even be banned from future travel. Any frequent flyer points or status could also be forfeited.
