Non Region Specific Skiplagging - Would you try it?

[Tricia]

Because direct flights can be sold at a premium price, so they're losing out on money they could have made.

If you book a flight to cities A-B-C, but only go from A-B. They now have an open seat on B-C. They could have sold two direct-flight tickets for way more than your 1-way ticket with a layover.

This! ^^
According to a news story I was watching, airlines are getting annoyed because they have empty seats, and are spending time calling the name of the missing passenger when the person doesn't show.

 

[Tricia]

Several years ago I was flying to Dayton Ohio, connecting in Cincinnati. Half the people on the Cincinnati-to-Dayton leg were renting a car and driving back to Cincinnati.

I flew to OK to visit my niece a few years ago with a round trip airfare. After arriving, @Philpug reached out and suggested that I miss my connecting flight because my stopover was DEN-RNO. He drove from Reno to Colorado, IIRC @SBrown picked me up at DEN and we met up with Phil to ski.

I was upfront about not making my connecting flight when I arrived at DEN. But this was not an intentional skiplagging, it was just that...the snow in CO was good.

 

[surfsnowgirl]

I'll have to check out the website. I like the idea of using it as a source for flight ideas/combos. Generally speaking we're direct flight kinda people. I'd rather pay a little extra money and not have to worry about msising a flight due to a tight layover timeframe.

 

[Tony S]

On most of the completely-full flights I've been on recently, the overhead bins have filled up and the later groups have had to check their carry-ons. And those were full size planes to major hubs.

Yup

 

[dbostedo]

I'm just disappointed that I didn't get to read an article about "ski plagging", which sounds much more interesting.

 

[David Chaus]

I'm just disappointed that I didn't get to read an article about "ski plagging", which sounds much more interesting.

Kind of like a hastily done and poorly executed p-tex repair that creates friction on ski, resulting in that ski lagging behind the other ski? Used in a sentence: “dude, your right ski is plagging like crazy.”

 

[Tony S]

Related tangent: It's been a while since I bought a round trip ticket.

First there is the obvious issue that a single airline might not offer the most convenient or least expensive flights in both directions. This happens to me very frequently when flying out of Portland (ME). "You can get there but you can't get home."

Anyway, I got out of the habit of buying round trip when I was flying mostly on Southwest. They didn't seem to offer any kind of a break on a round trip ticket vs. two one-ways. Meanwhile I had had an experience with a round trip ticket on a different airline where I wanted to cancel or make a significant change to the return flight. They made me cancel the whole itinerary and rebook from scratch. At that point the outbound flight I'd been totally happy with had gone way up in price. They insisted I had to pay that new price. I was PO'd. That kind of put me off round trip tickets.

Since then I've found on other airlines, too, that buying a round trip ticket doesn't always save you any money.

 

[crosscountry]

buying a round trip ticket doesn't always save you any money.

This may have been the motivation many bought round trip ticket. But I've once found out there's particular advantage of round trip ticket. For a short trip that is, say a quick weekend trip to Snowbird, for example...

So on one Friday, I was sitting inside the plane which sat on the taxiway. But there's a storm outside. It took some time before they announced the airport is closed due to the storm, and deplaned everyone.

We all piled into the terminal trying to get re-booked for the next flight out. But the storm wasn't supposed to let up till next morning. And the only flight still have seats available wouldn't be till late that day...

Only problem was, I was supposed to fly back on Sunday evening. I would only get one day of skiing instead of 3. Naturally, I wished to cancel the trip. No problem, the whole round trip ticket was refunded. 30 seconds later, I dragged my skis out the terminal and drove up to VT for the weekend. I missed the weekend of skiing at Snowbird. But I wasn't missing any money from the flight.

Had I bought 2 separate tickets, especially if by a different airline, I'd have trouble getting that return leg ticket refunded.

Fly often enough, one eventually gone through different kind of "issues"...

One long time ago, I was at Aspen airport waiting for the puddle jumper to take me to Denver and back home in the east. But there's another storm and the puddle jumper couldn't land. So the bunch of strangers waiting there decided to rent a van together and drove to Denver. Of course, we missed our connecting flight out of Denver by that point. Those of us who bought a single ticket from the same airline for our Aspen to Denver to home (wherever that was) all got our Denver to home leg rebooked for free. I even got my Aspen to Denver leg of the ticket refunded. But those who bought their 2 legs separately had more trouble getting a new flight rebooked.

 

[Lauren]

Had I bought 2 separate tickets, especially if by a different airline, I'd have trouble getting that return leg ticket refunded.

This has happened to me...had to turn around after my first leg of a flight due to a family emergency. I was issued a travel credit for the flight where I had successfully completed 1/2 of my journey. But ended up eating the cost of the return flight. If I had booked a round trip, I probably would have gotten a credit for the full amount.

 

[Seldomski]

airlines are getting annoyed

GOOD! Small price for them when I have to decline 5 different upcharges when checking in. Make your services less annoying and pricing less hostile and maybe I can start having sympathy for the 'woe is me' airlines.

 

[scott43]

Airlines are really a reflection of society. We wanted bottom-line pricing and the internet enabled this. So now we have baggage fees and people try to carry-on 2 or 3 bags and some are actual suitcases. And yeah some stuff gets gate-checked because people abuse the process. But really, it's not the airlines..it's us.

 

[SKI-3PO]

GOOD! Small price for them when I have to decline 5 different upcharges when checking in. Make your services less annoying and pricing less hostile and maybe I can start having sympathy for the 'woe is me' airlines.

The problem is they will take action due to their annoyance and find new ways to screw us - likely impacting more than those annoying them with this issue.

In general, when we get annoyed by the airlines, we complain for a bit and then just buy another ticket because there aren’t any good alternatives.

 

[scott43]

We should keep in mind the cost of air travel in general... Maybe we complain so much because it's just expected that it should be cheap as chips and twice as easy as driving..

 

[Seldomski]

The problem is they will take action due to their annoyance and find new ways to screw us - likely impacting more than those annoying them with this issue.

In general, when we get annoyed by the airlines, we complain for a bit and then just buy another ticket because there aren’t any good alternatives.

I fly Southwest as much as I can. They are no longer the cheapest, but I dont feel like they are trying to screw me at every turn.

 

[Tony S]

I fly Southwest as much as I can. They are no longer the cheapest, but I dont feel like they are trying to screw me at every turn.

Agree. Unfortunately they've curtailed their service out of my airport so severely that I almost never find workable flights anymore. It's a bummer.

 

[dbostedo]

We should keep in mind the cost of air travel in general... Maybe we complain so much because it's just expected that it should be cheap as chips and twice as easy as driving..
View attachment 204814

Now I'm really curious to see the graph continued out to 2023.

 

[Bill Miles]

And here I thought skiplagging was when an interstellar space ship dropped into some extra dimension.

 

[Seldomski]

I'm just disappointed that I didn't get to read an article about "ski plagging", which sounds much more interesting.

It's like skijoring, but done in the summer with grass skis.

 

[SKI-3PO]

I like Southwest too. But I probably would have went through that complaining period I mentioned if I was affected by the holiday 2022 cancellations because they haven‘t upgraded their computer systems since the punch card era.

 

[crgildart]

Yes, you'd book two one way tickets.

^^Was about to say that