A Bangladeshi entrepreneur has been sued by a major US airline and an online ticketing portal for helping travellers find cheap tickets using a loophole.
United Airlines and Orbitz filed the lawsuit last month against Aktarer Zaman, who founded the website Skiplagged.com in 2013.
Zaman posted on the website on December 30 seeking donations from users of Skiplagged.com to fight the lawsuit.
The lawsuit against this 22-year-old Bangladeshi computer science graduate who grew up in Brooklyn, New York, was reported by fox13now.com.
The Skiplagged.com founder said he did not do anything illegal by exposing an “inefficiency” in airline ticket pricing.
The site helps travellers find cheap flights by using a strategy called “hidden city” ticketing.
Zaman and United declined to discuss the lawsuit. However, Orbitz said in a statement that it is obligated to uphold airline fare rules.
In the lawsuit, United and Orbitz call Skiplagged “unfair competition” and alleged that it is promoting “strictly prohibited” travel.
They want to recover $75,000 in lost revenue from Zaman, claiming that he had intentionally and maliciously used the website to damage their businesses.
Skiplagged looks for deals where it is cheaper for a person to buy a ticket with a layover at the destination of choice.
Airlines in US apparently charge more for travelling to a major hub but not so much for non-hub destinations. The price is even lower for small towns although they are farther away.
For instance, a ticket from Cox’s Bazaar to Dhaka would cost more than one from Cox’s Bazar to Syedpur since Dhaka is a major hub and Syedpur is a small town. Thus it would be cheaper for the traveller to buy a ticket for Syedpur and get off when the plane lands in Dhaka.
In the US, flights to or from ‘hub’ airports that are dominated by a single carrier, like United — Boston, Massachusetts; Chicago, Illinois; and Denver, Colorado — are 20 to 30 percent higher than at non-hub destinations.
