‘Hack’ing off the airlines
Airfare ‘‘hackers’’ were ruffled last week after news that German airline Lufthansa was pursuing legal action against an unnamed passenger – for not taking a flight. You would think the carrier would be pleased to sell a ticket and have one less drink-and-snack to hand out.
But Lufthansa has instead put travellers on notice to stop booking a multi-stop journey at a discount but only using part of the itinerary. The hack exists because, for example, if you want to get from A to B it can (oddly) be cheaper to book a ticket from A to C, via B, rather than A to B direct.
As if airfare pricing wasn’t complex enough? Stick with me here.
Next week, using the airfare website Skiplagged, which specialises in finding these hacker fares, I can book a one-way flight with TAP Portugal from Amsterdam to Barcelona, via Lisbon for NZ$138. The standard fare if you only book the Amsterdam to Lisbon leg on the exact same TAP plane journey is $175. The longer flight is cheaper because Spanish or Dutch carriers will fly between Amsterdam and Barcelona directly, so TAP needs to compete on price. Just grabbing my carry-on and hopping off at Lisbon and throwing away Lisbon-Barcelona boarding pass would save me around $40.
So why is Lufthansa suing and why does it care if you buy a ‘‘throwaway ticket’’ and make your stopover point your final destination? Lufthansa and other airlines call this passenger practice ‘‘tariff abuse’’ and technically it’s a breach of most airlines’ terms and conditions.
It’s suing the passenger for the price difference between the amount he paid and what the airline claims the cost of the journey he actually made usually costs. He purchased a business-class return ticket from Oslo via Frankfurt to Seattle for around 680 euro ($1120). He flew from Oslo to Frankfurt to Seattle and back to Frankfurt but never boarded his final flight back to Oslo. The German flag carrier claims if he had booked the journey he actually flew it would have cost him almost four times what he paid.
It’s not such a common hack in our skies. The pricing models of Air New Zealand and Qantas are such that this type of airfare ‘‘hack’’ is rare.
For example, a flight from Auckland to Hokitika via Christchurch is priced as two separate legs and so its sum total will almost never be cheaper than a direct Auckland to Christchurch flight, so there is no reason to book AKL-HKK, hop off at Christchurch and throw away your boarding pass for the short hop over the Southern Alps. Similarly, Qantas quotes for a one-way flight from Auckland to Adelaide via Melbourne, or Cairns via Sydney, were never cheaper than a direct flight to those Aussie hubs in my experience.
However, savvy Kiwis who put together a travel itinerary using one way flights (for example, the now rite-of-passage trip to Southeast Asia) can still save money using this ‘‘third city’’ hack. I found flights quoted on Thai Airways between Auckland and Bangkok were around $80 cheaper if using a ticket booked with the carrier between Auckland and Manila via Bangkok. To get the savings you’d have to make do with carry-on baggage, as any checked baggage would be flown through to the final ticketed destination. It doesn’t work with return journeys, because many airlines have a ‘‘noshow’’ clause whereby they cancel return journeys if you fail to board a previous part of your journey.
In the US and Europe these deals are much more common, as a greater number of connections pass through highly competitive hub airports such as London Heathrow, Paris, Amsterdam, and Frankfurt (hence, Lufthansa’s legal action).
By all means, give Skiplagged a go if you’re putting together a holiday that deviates from the return airfare norm. The biggest limitation of this hack for the Kiwi budget traveller – apart from the lingering threat of legal action, of course – is that it only really works when using one-way flights and travelling light. Given our isolation and the prevalence of return airfare deals, it looks likely this throw-away ticket hack will remain a niche one. Lufthansa will be hoping its legal threat acts as a deterrent to savvy travellers, but it has so far gained only headlines which educate more people that such loopholes exist.