Airline bans teen from flying for three years after using ‘skiplagging’ scheme to save money
A teenager has been banned from flying with an airline for three years after they were caught pulling off a money saving travel hack called 'skiplagging'.
Ever heard of skiplagging? It's a trick airline passengers can sometimes use to get where they're going for less money, allow us to explain.
In some cases the direct flight to a destination is more expensive than a flight to somewhere beyond that which goes via the place you actually want to be.
This is where skiplagging comes in, you book yourself onto the cheaper flight and simply don't bother to get your connection because you've already landed in the place you were hoping to travel to and saved some money to boot.
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This is the travel hack teen Logan Parsons pulled off when he wanted to fly from Gainesville, Florida, to Charlotte in North Carolina.
A direct flight would have been pretty pricey but a flight to New York via Charlotte didn't cost quite so much, so this is the journey Logan booked and since getting to Charlotte was his goal he just didn't get on the plane to New York.
However, this method hit a snag when airport security clocked the teens North Carolina ID and took him to a security room to be interrogated, his dad claims.
According to Logan's dad, Hunter, the teen had his ticket canceled and he was forced to buy the direct flight.
Hunter later told Insider that his 17-year-old son had been banned from flying with American Airlines for three years because he'd tried skiplagging.
A lot of airlines do not allow this practice and will try to crack down on it if they possibly can because it loses them money.
As you can guess they'd rather sell passengers the direct flight, even if it is the more expensive ticket, and if people are skiplagging that means there's going to be an empty seat on the connecting flight as well.
Logan's family said the flight the teen booked onto which went from Florida to New York via North Carolina cost around $150, while the direct flight from Florida to North Carolina was over $400.
Other airlines have in the past punished passengers who were caught skiplagging.
A few years back Lufthansa sued a passenger who tried skiplagging on their planes, though the case was thrown out of court even though the airline was deemed to be in the right.
In 2018 United Airlines tried to charge one of their passengers thousands of dollars as they believed they'd caught the person skiplagging 38 times.
UNILAD has contacted American Airlines for comment.
Joe Harker