Hidden City Ticketing: What It Is and Why Airlines Hate It

What Hidden City Ticketing Is

Hidden city ticketing — also known as "skiplagging" after the website Skiplagged.com that popularized it — exploits a structural quirk in airline pricing where a connecting itinerary sometimes costs less than a direct flight to the intermediate stop. Example: a nonstop flight from New York to Chicago might cost $350, while a New York–Chicago–Denver itinerary with the same airline costs $180. A traveler who books the cheaper connecting itinerary and simply deplanes in Chicago — skipping the Denver leg — pays $170 less for the same physical journey.

This pricing inversion exists because airlines price routes based on market competition and demand at the final destination. The Chicago–Denver route is highly competitive (United, Southwest, Frontier, and Spirit all compete), driving connecting fare prices lower to fill seats on that onward leg. Chicago itself as a destination may have less competitive pressure from New York on the specific travel dates, allowing the airline to charge more for the nonstop. The connecting ticket isn't intended for people traveling only to Chicago — but nothing in the physics of aviation prevents a passenger from leaving the plane there.

Skiplagged.com automates the identification of hidden city opportunities, searching for itineraries where a discounted connecting fare through a target city costs less than the nonstop. Google Flights and other standard search tools don't surface these opportunities because they assume travelers will complete their booked journey. Skiplagged's algorithm found its niche by solving specifically this problem — and United Airlines and Orbitz sued Skiplagged in 2014 (the case was dismissed) for the publicity and legitimacy it brought to the practice.

The Legal and Contractual Reality

Hidden city ticketing is not illegal. No law prohibits a passenger from leaving a flight at an intermediate stop. What it does violate is the airline's contract of carriage — the legal agreement between the airline and the passenger that governs the terms of the ticket. Delta's contract of carriage, for example, states that it may "cancel any remaining reservations" if a passenger fails to travel on a flight segment. American's contract states that passengers who no-show a segment without canceling may have subsequent segments canceled and fares recalculated at the higher "point-to-point" rate.

Airlines have gradually increased enforcement. They can detect hidden city ticketing through their reservation systems when a passenger consistently books connecting itineraries and consistently no-shows the second segment. Frequent flyers with elite status have been warned or had their accounts flagged for repeated skiplagging. In rare cases, airlines have attempted to bill passengers the fare difference between the connecting ticket and the point-of-departure price — Lufthansa filed (and initially won) such a claim against a German passenger in 2019, though the legal basis was contested and the case settled.

In practice, casual hidden city ticketing is low-risk for occasional travelers with no frequent flyer account. The airline cannot charge you more after travel (credit card protections and consumer law make retroactive billing difficult), and a one-time occurrence rarely triggers any response. For frequent flyers with elite status, the calculus changes: your loyalty account is identifiable, and airlines explicitly reserve the right to cancel accounts that "abuse" their fare rules. The value of elite status typically exceeds the savings from occasional skiplagging.

Practical Limitations That Make It Less Useful Than It Appears

Hidden city ticketing only works on one-way or outbound segments. Using it on the return leg of a round-trip ticket is impossible: missing a flight segment on an outbound trip typically causes airlines to cancel the entire return. If you buy a New York–Chicago–Denver round-trip and skiplag in Chicago on the outbound, the airline may cancel your Chicago–Denver and Denver–New York return segments when you don't board in Denver. You'd need to book separately — a round-trip Chicago–Denver that you don't use, plus a separate New York–Chicago outbound, which defeats the entire cost logic.

You cannot check baggage on a hidden city ticket. If your bag is checked to Denver and you exit in Chicago, your bag flies to Denver without you. This limits the strategy entirely to carry-on travelers, which itself imposes the overhead of planning a trip around airline carry-on restrictions. Spirit's personal item limits (18" × 14" × 8"), frontier's carry-on fees, and United's overhead bin competition at peak times all add friction.

The strategy fails entirely in irregular operations. If your Chicago connection is delayed and the airline rebooks you on a later flight direct to Denver — or if they automatically rebook you on a different Chicago–Denver departure — you've lost control of the itinerary. Airlines rebook disrupted passengers to their final ticketed destination, not the intermediate stop where you planned to exit. During storms or ATC ground stops, what appeared to be a money-saving booking can turn into an involuntary trip to the wrong city.

What Airlines Have Done in Response

Airlines have lobbied for legislative action without success in the US, where the practice isn't clearly prohibited under existing law. United's 2014 lawsuit against Skiplagged.com was dismissed because United couldn't demonstrate sufficient harm — the practice, while contract-violating, doesn't clearly constitute tortious interference at a scale the court found actionable. Airlines' primary response has been through their own fare rules and system monitoring rather than legal action.

Revenue management systems now flag bookings that match skiplagging patterns: single travelers, one-way or round-trip bookings to a hub city with a connecting segment to a less popular destination, no seat selection on the final segment, checked-in to the intermediate stop only. These signals don't prevent ticketing but tag the booking for monitoring. Elite accounts associated with repeated patterns receive internal flags that may affect upgrade priority or, in documented cases, result in account termination.

Some airlines now impose fees for "itinerary abandonment" — passengers who book but don't show for a connecting segment on routes where skiplagging is common. Norwegian and some European carriers include explicit "point-to-point repricing" clauses that allow them to charge the undiscounted one-way fare if a passenger doesn't complete the itinerary. Whether these clauses are enforceable in specific jurisdictions varies; they function more as deterrence than consistently applied policy.

Ethical and Practical Alternatives

The same fare advantage that creates hidden city opportunities often exists in other forms that don't require contract violation. Adding a continuing segment to a booking you actually intend to use — flying New York–Chicago–Denver and spending a night in Denver before returning from Denver to New York — gives you the same discounted Chicago access plus an additional city at no extra cost. This is called a "throwaway" connection and is neither legally nor contractually problematic.

Positioning flights — buying a separate cheap ticket to a hub and connecting internationally — achieve similar cost benefits legitimately. Flying from Columbus to JFK on a $79 Southwest fare and then catching a $350 transatlantic from JFK is cheaper than a $750 nonstop from Columbus, without any contract violation, and the two tickets have no interdependence to manage. The risk is missing the connection, which is managed by allowing sufficient time between the two bookings.

The most effective and entirely above-board alternative is simply using fare comparison tools more aggressively: Google Flights' flexible-date calendar view, Scott's Cheap Flights deal emails, and airline fare sales frequently surface pricing anomalies — genuine discounts that don't require skipping any part of your itinerary. The time spent researching legitimate deals often exceeds the benefit of skiplagging, particularly when accounting for the checked-bag limitation and disruption risk.