According to AP, AA will sue Skiplagged in Texas over what it says is deceptive behavior, and it is also threatening to cancel all tickets issued through the site. To me, this mostly looks like AA trying to make life difficult for them, since after all this time it still hasn’t really been able to do anything about it. AA’s fares are publicly available numbers that AA itself sets; Skiplagged just helps people find those fares.
In fact, UA also sued them before, but that case was unsuccessful.
Some people may not be familiar with skiplagging, so here’s a quick explanation. Normally, when we buy an A-B flight, we either buy a nonstop A-B flight, or an A-C-B itinerary with a connection in C. Skiplagging means buying an A-B-C itinerary and then skipping the B-C segment. Sometimes this can save a lot of money, especially when destination B is a small city and C is a big city, or vice versa. That’s because airlines often compete aggressively for the large market between two big cities, and they may price nonstop and connecting flights cheaply as well, or bundle many passengers into the A-B segment. As a result, the A-C fare above may actually be cheaper than the A-B fare. This site is built specifically to help people search for these kinds of tickets.
For example, in the flight below, our target is an SFO-IAD itinerary, and the software found that booking SFO-IAD-CVG is a better deal than booking SFO-IAD directly.
And the other nonstop SFO-IAD prices are all higher.
This is just to give everyone an idea. There are risks if you actually do this, so make sure you do not enter your frequent flyer number, and do not have any checked bags on a connecting itinerary. Once you arrive at IAD, just pick up your carry-on items and go. If you want to learn more about skiplagging, see: