Hidden City Ticketing: The Travel Hack Airlines Don’t Want You To Know About

Have you heard of the travel hack hidden city ticketing yet? It also goes by the name “skiplagging”, as essentially you are skipping a leg of a flight. This hack is becoming increasingly popular among travelers, because it can save you a lot of money on a flight. But airlines don’t like it and are trying to take it down.

What is hidden city ticketing?

Normally you book a ticket to the destination you want to go to and disembark there. With a hidden city flight, however, you get off at the layover instead of the final destination. For example, let’s say you want to go from Amsterdam to Dubai. Instead of flying directly to Dubai, you buy a much cheaper ticket to Bangkok with a layover in Dubai and get off the plane there.  

The obvious benefit is that it’s cheaper. It’s also legal (more on that later), so why on earth wouldn’t you do it?

One of the biggest disadvantages for you as a traveler is that you can’t check in any luggage, because that ends up at the final ticketed destination. You don’t want to risk taking a lot of hand luggage with you either, as it might be checked in at the gate if there are many passengers. Therefore you can only bring a small carry-on backpack.

And if you’re extremely unlucky (2% chance, according to Skiplagged) the itinerary of the flight changes due to bad weather, meaning you end up at that dreaded final destination after all.

How do you book a hidden city flight?

Okay, so you decided that you don’t need a lot of luggage and you are going to give it a try. The first thing you want to do is go to Skiplagged and check out their travel deals. It’s the number one website out there specialized in hidden city ticketing. They compare regular tickets with hidden city flights which makes your life a lot easier.

If you’re going to book a hidden city flight, you need to be aware that when you don’t show up for your flight the airline will cancel all subsequent flights booked on the same ticket. This means that you can only book a one-way flight or skip a leg on the return of a roundtrip.

Don’t associate your frequent flyer account either. If the airline finds out that you are making use of a hidden city flight, they might invalidate your miles.

Airlines don’t like it, so be smart about it. Don’t tell anyone and don’t do it too often either. It’s highly unlikely that there will be any repercussions if you only do it once, though, as it’s incredibly hard to proof for airlines. Who says you did it on purpose?

Airlines are cracking down on hidden city ticketing

All good right? Well, no, not entirely. The direct flight to the place you want to go to is more expensive than a hidden city flight, so airlines cannot maximize their revenue. Many people mistakenly assume that the price of a flight is determined by how far you fly. But generally prices are determined, among other things, by the supply and demand of flights.

Almost every airline states in their contract of carriage that hidden city ticketing is not allowed. Back in 2015, United Airlines sued Skiplagged for “unfair competition”, “deceptive behavior” and the promotion of “strictly prohibited travel”. Eventually the lawsuit was dismissed on procedural grounds, but it’s far from settled.

In 2018 Lufthansa even sued a passenger for more than $2000,- who deliberately skipped a part of his flight. The passenger booked a roundtrip from Oslo to Seattle with a layover in Frankfurt. On the return flight, however, the passenger disembarked in Frankfurt and got on a plane to Berlin. His mistake was that he booked his flight to Berlin with the same airline, which is how they found out. As a result, Lufthansa regarded this as a violation of their contract of carriage, which reads that a passenger should use all individual legs in the booked sequence. If this does not happen, the airline will recalculate the fare according to the altered route.

Even though Lufthansa succeeded in sending a message to hidden city fliers around the world, their lawsuit also got dismissed (which is on appeal though). So for now airlines aren’t succeeding in taking it down legally, but I don’t think they will stop trying.

Is it ethical?

I think so, yes. And I’m not alone in this, just read this column by the New York Times. Hidden city ticketing does violate the airline’s contract of carriage, which allows the airline to penalize passengers by cancelling their frequent flier miles, for example. But legally, airlines are failing in taking it down.

And look at it from another perspective: which company sues you for not using the entire product? Are restaurants going to sue guests for not finishing their meal? Are soap brands going to sue people for buying a cheaper, larger bar of soap instead of a more expensive, smaller one? That’s completely ridiculuous, right? Why, then, is it required to take every leg of a booked flight? 

It’s controversial and a bit of a hassle, but also incredibly hard to proof these hidden city tickets for airlines. Therefore I see it as a calculated risk that can save you a lot of money. Most hidden city travelers don’t run into any problems whatsoever and are happily traveling around the world. One leg at a time. 

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What do you think about hidden city ticketing? If you want to know more about cheap flights, read my guide on how to find cheap flights.