United, Orbitz Sue Travel Site Over 'Hidden City' Ticketing
From Bloomberg
United Airlines Inc. and Orbitz Worldwide LLC sued to prevent the travel website Skiplagged.com from helping consumers buy what the companies call improper “hidden city” plane tickets that undercut their sales.
The companies accused the site’s founder, Aktarer Zaman of New York, of “intentionally and maliciously” interfering with their airline industry business relationships “by promoting prohibited forms of travel,” in their complaint filed today in federal court in Chicago.
Skiplagged helps consumers find cheap airfares by enabling them to book passage on a flight with one or more stops and then deplane before the flight reaches its as-booked final destination.
“In its simplest form, a passenger purchases a ticket from city A to city B to city C but does not travel beyond city B,” according to the companies’ complaint. “‘Hidden City’ ticketing is strictly prohibited by most commercial airlines because of logistical and public-safety concerns.”
Among those concerns, according to the complaint, is United’s resultant inability to estimate flight passenger counts which can cause departure delays and affect fuel load computations.
Read more in our daily News Update...
From Bloomberg
United Airlines Inc. and Orbitz Worldwide LLC sued to prevent the travel website Skiplagged.com from helping consumers buy what the companies call improper “hidden city” plane tickets that undercut their sales.
The companies accused the site’s founder, Aktarer Zaman of New York, of “intentionally and maliciously” interfering with their airline industry business relationships “by promoting prohibited forms of travel,” in their complaint filed today in federal court in Chicago.
Skiplagged helps consumers find cheap airfares by enabling them to book passage on a flight with one or more stops and then deplane before the flight reaches its as-booked final destination.
“In its simplest form, a passenger purchases a ticket from city A to city B to city C but does not travel beyond city B,” according to the companies’ complaint. “‘Hidden City’ ticketing is strictly prohibited by most commercial airlines because of logistical and public-safety concerns.”
Among those concerns, according to the complaint, is United’s resultant inability to estimate flight passenger counts which can cause departure delays and affect fuel load computations.
Read more in our daily News Update...