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You can save money on hidden-city ticketing—but is it worth it?
Most travelers know that causing unruly behavior on a flight can lead to dire consequences, but many may not realize that you can also get in big trouble for not setting foot on a flight at all. While missing a leg of a flight might sometimes be unavoidable due to changes in travel plans, savvy travelers have been purposely missing the second leg of their flights for years to save hundreds of dollars on fares. Recently, Lufthansa Airlines even sued a passenger €2,112 ($2,374) for this practice, which is known as “hidden-city ticketing.” (A Berlin court dismissed the suit, but the carrier plans to appeal, according to CNN.)
But are the fares legal, and is it worth checking them out? Here's what you need to know.
The “hidden cities” in this context are all of the places that become much cheaper to fly to when you’re supposed to only be there for a few hours on a layover instead of a final destination. To be clear, we’re not talking about mystical destinations such as Colombia’s Lost City (although you should still definitely go there) but places such as Detroit or Houston that become much cheaper to fly to when they’re the appetizer instead of the main meal of your three-course flying experience. That’s because airline pricing depends on a lot of factors besides just the cost of fuel—competition on the route, the popularity of business travel, and other factors play a role.
As a hypothetical example, let’s say we’re flying from Boston to Oklahoma City and looking for flights. If you scour the main search engine websites such as Kayak or Google Flights, you’ll see many connecting flights to Oklahoma City with stops in other places such as Philadelphia or Chicago. However, the goal in hidden-city ticketing would be to find a journey where Oklahoma City is the layover on a flight to a final destination you don’t plan to visit. In the end, that could look like buying a flight between Boston to Los Angeles and getting off the plane with no intentions of setting foot on the West Coast.
So, how does one reveal these so-called hidden cities? The website Skiplagged pioneered this practice and is still up and running, even after United Airlines and Orbitz sued the company’s founder Aktarer Zaman in 2014 (Orbitz settled and the remaining case was eventually dropped because the judge said that court didn’t have jurisdiction, CNN reported). Today, Skipplagged has a “few million” active users per month that scour the website for flights or hotel deals, says Skiplagged’s Head of Design and Experience Philippe Ramet. These could be for hidden-city tickets that make up “a bit more than 20 percent” of flights on the website, or for the more “regular” flights that go from point A to B per usual.
While it’s true that you can save a lot of money using hidden-city tickets, we suggest looking at other options first due to issues that could arise at the airport and after the trip.
Hidden-city ticketing tends to go against airlines’ rules, but actually getting sued for the practice is unlikely for those not doing it often. Lufthansa says “legal disputes in this context are very rare,” in part because recalculating the fare the passenger would have owed must follow certain laws.
Skiplagged says on its website that these hidden-city flights are “perfectly legal.” It looks like this is now the case for those traveling on Iberia due to a recent Spanish court decision. But regardless of the possible legal interpretations of hidden-city ticketing around the globe, there are still consequences and considerations that could affect your trip and relationship with airlines.
One of the biggest reasons why it might be a good idea to look elsewhere for travel deals is that traveling on hidden-city tickets requires you to remember a lot of little rules.
For starters, flying on a hidden-city itinerary requires being extra careful about your baggage. Skiplagged tells customers not to check bags, but notes that even carry-ons could pose an issue if there’s not enough space on the aircraft. While some airlines can gate-check bags, others might check it to the final destination if there’s not enough room.
Another downside of traveling with hidden-city tickets is the risk of weather-related or logistical issues throwing a wrench in your plans. For example, you could be on a flight between New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and Los Angeles with a stop in Chicago, but the airline would prioritize getting you to Los Angeles before putting you on another itinerary that happens to stop in Chicago. Offering to go to Chicago anyway through another itinerary could raise suspicion that you are purposely intending to get around that carrier’s fare rules.
“Hidden-city is a risky move to make; it is not without some potential risks to the traveler,” says Henry Harteveldt, travel industry analyst and president of San Francisco-based Atmosphere Research Group. He notes that if the itinerary changes, “the airline has every right to rebook you on one of those different flights.”
