NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — A young computer whiz from New York City has launched a site to help people buy cheap plane tickets. But an airline company and its travel partner want to shut him down.

United Airlines and Orbitz filed a civil lawsuit last month against 22-year-old Aktarer Zaman, who founded the website Skiplagged.com last year.

The site helps travelers find cheap flights by using a strategy called “hidden city” ticketing.

The idea is that you buy an airline ticket that has a layover at your actual destination. Say you want to fly from New York to San Francisco — you actually book a flight from New York to Lake Tahoe with a layover in San Francisco and get off there, without bothering to take the last leg of the flight.

This travel strategy only works if you book a one-way flight with no checked bags (they would have landed in Lake Tahoe).

It’s not like these tickets are the cheapest all the time, but they often are.

In the lawsuit, United and Orbitz call Skiplagged “unfair competition” and allege that it is promoting “strictly prohibited” travel. They want to recoup $75,000 in lost revenue from Zaman.

Zaman said he knew a lawsuit was inevitable but he points out that there’s nothing illegal about his web site.

He also said he has made no profit via the website and that all he’s done is help travelers get the best prices by exposing an “inefficiency,” in airline prices that insiders have known about for decades.

“[Hidden city ticketing] have been around for a while, it just hasn’t been very accessible to consumers,” Zaman told CNNMoney.

Indeed, “hidden city,” ticketing is no secret among frequent fliers, said Michael Boyd, President of Boyd Group International, an aviation consulting firm in Evergreen, Co. Boyd worked as an American Airline ticket agent 30 years ago, and says he was trained at the airline to help customers find “hidden city” fares.

“I don’t think it’s illegal what he’s doing,” Boyd said. But lawsuits are expensive and it could end up costing the young entrepreneur who has irked the two billion dollar corporations.

Airlines usually offer cheaper fares for some destinations that are not regional hubs, Boyd said. Many of these flights are routed through more popular destinations. But if a lot of people take advantage of that discrepancy it could hurt the airlines, which is why they want to shut him down.

Born in Bangladesh, Zaman grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in computer science at age 20 from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He lives in Manhattan and works at a technology start-up that he declined to name.

Zaman said Skiplagged is just a “side project.”

Zaman and United declined to discuss the lawsuit. Orbitz said in a statement that it is obligated to uphold airline fare rules.

Other travel experts say that the airlines may not achieve much if Zaman’s site is shut down, especially in a world where information is becoming more readily available.

“If [Skiplagged is] shut down, undoubtedly there will be other people to come along to scrape fares and make them available,” said Robert Mann, president of R.W. Mann & Company, an airline consulting firm in Port Washington, N.Y.

http://foxct.com/2014/12/29/united-airlines-sues-a-22-year-old/

By Iro-Anna Mamakouka on January 16, 2014-Greek Reporter
The increase in tourism in Greece has led to significant changes in domestic and foreign air travel. This has encouraged foreign airline companies to invest in Greece and to add new routes, competing directly with Greek airline Aegean-Olympic.

Low cost carrier Ryanair, announced yesterday its intention to strengthen its presence in Greece by creating new bases in Athens and Thessaloniki in April, offering domestic and foreign services. Ryanair officials wasted no time in pointing the finger at Aegean-Olympic for the “domestic monopoly which harms Greece’s economy.” Furthermore they stated that “Athens does not fully services the flight needs,” and “because of the high prices, flight demand decreases”.

Ryanair is betting on Greece with really cheap tickets of 12 euros for Athens to Thessaloniki.

According to Aegean, “the creation of new bases in Athens and Thessaloniki confirms the existence of an extremely competitive market within the frame of European airlines. This is exactly the reason for which the two largest Greek airline companies, Aegean and Olympic Air, were merged. The merger happened in order for a Greek airline company to develop and operate effectively so that it could represent our country in the European market.”

Ryanair is expected to offer about 154 flights from Athens and 212 from Thessaloniki, per week. The company also claims that its new expansion plans will lead to the creation of more than 1,200 jobs at its new base in Athens.

(Reuters) – Aegean Airlines (AGNr.AT) may have to offer fresh concessions to secure EU approval for its second bid to buy Greek rival Olympic Air (MRFr.AT), after the EU’s competition watchdog deepened its investigation into the deal on Tuesday.

Aegean submitted concessions to the European Commission last month, including capping fares on some domestic routes. It sees the 72 million-euro ($94 million) deal as vital to its survival in the shrinking Greek air transport market.

But the Commission said in a statement on Tuesday that it was concerned a deal would lead to price rises and poorer services on some domestic routes out of Athens, where the combined group would have a monopoly or strong position.

The routes in question were used by Greek passengers as well as foreign travelers, it said.

“We have the duty to ensure that Greek passengers and people visiting Greece can travel at competitive air fares, even more so during challenging economic times,” EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said in the statement.

The Commission will now decide on the deal by September 3. Reuters had reported the Commission still had concerns earlier this month.

The regulator blocked Aegean’s first bid for Olympic in 2011, worried that the combined group would have a quasi-monopoly in the Greek air travel market.

And blocking another deal in the sector, the Commission rejected Ireland-based carrier Ryanair’s (RYA.I) third bid for Aer Lingus (AERL.I) in February this year, saying Europe’s biggest low-cost airline had not offered sufficient concessions.

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Greg Mahlich)

www.ekathimerini.com
By Alexandra Kassimi

Greece is at risk of finding itself isolated in terms of air connections if carriers continue to strike the country off their itineraries at the current rate.

The most recent hit came from Delta Airlines, which has decided to stop all of its direct flights between Greece and the United States as of this coming fall, even though up until three years ago the American carrier had five direct flights a week linking the two countries and is the only remaining carrier to operate direct flights, along with US Airways, although the latter’s Athens-Philadelphia connection is set to remain for this summer season only. Olympic and Continental have also stopped their direct Greece-US flights, as did United Airlines one year ago. Come this fall, the only way to travel to the US will be via connection with other airports in Europe.

It must be noted, however, that transatlantic travel has been affected not just by the situation in Greece, but by the international crisis that began in 2008 as well, with leisure travelers preferring to take the longer route when it is cheaper.

Other than business travel, which has also experienced a slump, though not to the degree of leisure travel, direct flights between Greece and the US were also important in boosting Greek cruises, according to market experts. The cancellation of direct flights, the experts say, is therefore expected to have a negative impact on demand for cruises.

Air Canada, meanwhile, is still holding off from pulling its flights entirely, though it has reduced its Athens-Montreal route to twice rather than three times a week, while it has also decided not to increase flights to Toronto as it had planned to earlier.

Links between Greece and the US are not the only ones that have taken a hit. A great loss for the Greek market and for Athens International Airport (AIA) in particular was the pullout of Thai Airways, which had been present in Greece for more than 36 years, and which no longer provides direct flights to Bangkok. Gulf Air has stopped its Athens-Bahrain route as well as its Athens-Damascus line, while Singapore Airlines has chosen Istanbul over Athens as its regional connection.

As far as the European market is concerned, Czech Airlines stopped its flights to Prague, an example that will be followed by SmartWings, which used to connect the Greek to the Czech capital with three flights a week. Only Aegean Airlines still flies to Prague today.

Other than carriers pulling out of the market completely, travel has also been reduced by companies cutting back on the number of flights they operate. Croatia Airlines, for example, now has two rather than three flights a week to Dubrovnik, and Aerosvit has just one instead of two flights a week to Odessa.

Finland’s Blue1 will be operating one flight a week to Helsinki until July 5, when it will increase that to three a week until August 4, in contrast to four flights a week last summer to serve tourists.

Travel to and from London’s airports are set to be gridlocked, as MPs and airlines warn of chaotic conditions during the London Olympics. Longstayparking.org.uk advises travellers to book their long-term parking ahead of time to save worry and money.
WEBWIRE – Wednesday, April 18, 2012