Technology

I used it a long time ago (like 2017) and saved me some good money, but I also did not use my skymiles account just in case.

I felt like it got less effective at finding the types of flights like the one I took and stopped trying.

It's definitely a bit of a pain because you gotta book two one-way flights

I use Skiplagged all the time. Never noticed any penalties. A while back I started calling the airline's customer service to let them know that I won't make the next leg of my flight, just to be courteous so there's no chance they're waiting on me if everyone else is boarded early; once or twice that's actually even resulted in a partial refund.

They literally will ban you for skip lagging (especially if you use any rewards type system). May save you a few bucks if you don't use them often and don't care, but not a great idea.

Rumor has it this is the case, but I haven't found any tangible "I used this service and was punished for it" stories.

....uh, WHICH IS TERRIBLE, BIG AIRLINES' RIGHTS ARE BEING INFRINGED. THIS IS A MATTER OF FREEDOM TO AVOID THIS SERVICE.

I thought I read years ago that airlines responded to Skiplagged by penalizing people who didn’t complete every leg of the trip they booked. I’m not sure why they would care.

They care because the real cost of air travel is not equaled everywhere on each mile flown. If the actual costs of flying to many small regional locations was reflected in the cost of the ticket, the ticket would be so absurdly high no one would every flight to that location, and the location would lose critical flight services for the community.

The solution many of those airlines used was to consolidate the majority of the flight into a hub using larger planes which are cheaper to operate per-passenger, and then use much smaller planes from the hub to the remote location charging the passenger the equivalent of a reasonable cost of a ticket for all hops along the way.

What Skiplagging as doing was essentially using the subsidized discount rate provided for the small regional destinations, but consumed by those not going to those places that needed subsidies on their flights going to major hubs. So not only was the airline losing money for each passenger not paying the normal fare to the hub airport, but also showing lower passenger volume to the small regional destinations increasing the cost of flying passengers that wanted to go their even more.

TLDR; Skiplagging screws small cities with low passenger volume risking their ability to maintain flight service at all to their towns.

Airlines can take some measures, but most of them can be worked around. Don't take checked luggage so it doesn't end up in the wrong destination. Book one way each time because they can cancel your return trip. They can go legal on you but only if you really overdo it.

The third party sites will just start getting the max rate, which would effectively eliminate them. Airlines (at least in the US) aren't making money off flights any longer anyways, it's all off credit cards. Delta is more of a bank than an airline.

Sometimes, a flight that passes through the place you're going is cheaper than a flight that ends there. Skiplagged's real power is finding those flights for you. Much harder to do it manually.

I think Southwest is moving to a hub and spoke model, but historically they haven't used it. Skip lagging seems to mostly rely on a "I want to travel to the hub, so buy a cheaper ticket to a different spoke and jump off at hub" methodology.

Which is to say, Southwest may just not be "vulnerable" to this atm.