How does skiplagging work, why do airlines hate it, and how can you get on your return flight if you’re supposed to be on the flight on the return layover?
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Hidden city ticketing only works for one way flights. Ticket prices aren’t set by passengers per flight, rather it’s a more like flights between 2 airports per day. An airline might be flying 10+ planes through the same airport from all over. So the prices on that leg of the flight and the flight overall will be lower. Thus you can board a flight from x to z and get off at the layover in y while paying less than a flight from x to y because there are less flights from x to y than from x to z.
Airlines don’t like it when you do this because if you don’t get in your flight from y to z then that’s an empty seat they could’ve sold another ticket for so that’s lost revenue.
As I said before there are no round trip flight with hidden city ticketing. You can construct a round trip with two one ways but you can’t buy a round trip ticket because if you don’t show up for your connecting flight then the airline assumes your tickets are altogether void.
If an aircraft is scheduled to fly from A to B to C, and the fare from A to C is cheaper than the fare from A to B then you just buy an A to C ticket and get off at B. That’s skiplagging. Airlines hate it because you saved money, meaning they lost money. You can’t check any baggage because that should arrive at C.
Skiplagging a return flight is particularly risky because you’re expected to check in at C and, when you don’t, they’ll call you a no-show and give someone else your seat. It’s actually worse than that because the airline can tell you didn’t fly the B to C leg on your outgoing flight and they’re likely to just cancel your whole return ticket at that point. Because they hate skiplagging and don’t want to risk empty seats on the return flights.
If you want to skiplag both ways, at the very least book the two journeys separately rather than as a single return ticket. Even that might not be enough since an airline can decide to cancel all future tickets for a person detected skiplagging. Using two different airlines might work.
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