The purchased flight was from Gainesville, Florida to New York City with a layover in Charlotte. The plan was for the teen to get off the plane in Charlotte where he lives. [… more in the article …]
I fly rarely these days but skiplagging has always been tempting. Has anyone here done it?
The main argument against skiplagging is that each ticket is a contract to get someone from point A to point B, and any points in between are at the discretion of the carrier. It’s quite common for airlines to have to reroute you through different cities if your flights have issues. So there is no guarantee at all you will actually fly through the connecting city.
But that’s a contractual issue, between you and the airline, and as long as the kid had a valid boarding pass for that airport there was no reason to detain him. Sounds like he was super anxious and the security agent thought that made him suspicious.
Yes, the contract might say that, but it’s not a legal obligation (the report says it’s totally legal).
It sounds like the airline wants to keep people hostage until they get to point B, and not allow free human beings to choose when they’d actually like to end their trip.
I think this is a strange contractual agreement, especially if we’re not talking about a babysitting service.
Probably the only thing that the airlines have on this specific case is the fact that the teen is a minor, so they do have a responsibility to make sure that he does get to his ticket destination.
That would be the risk of skip lagging, and the carrier has no responsibility over ensuring that it works in your favor. LOL
The father of this teen said that they use skip lagging all the time, but didn’t realize that it is 'frowned upon" by the airline.