NEW YORK, September 27 — The story begins with a seat that was never supposed to be empty. Skiplagging, the money-saving travel tactic also known as hidden-city flying, has drawn fresh attention as airfares climb, and the flight search engine built around it says nearly three hundred thousand people used it in the past year. At its heart, the practice is simple.
A passenger books a multi-leg itinerary but intentionally exits at the layover city instead of completing the trip to the ticketed final destination. Aktarer Zaman, CEO of the flight search engine Skiplagged, which uses an algorithm to surface hidden-city fares, offered a plain example in an interview.
A flight from New York to Orlando might cost $350, while a similar flight from New York to Dallas with a layover in Orlando might cost $170. Travelers who choose the cheaper option then get off in Orlando. The appeal is straightforward.
The average cost of a domestic round-trip ticket in the United States reached $624 in August 2026, according to U.S.-based travel agency ticket sales data from the Airlines Reporting Corporation — a 17% increase compared with the same time the prior year. Zaman says travelers who book through Skiplagged save an average of 47%, or $180, on their flights, and that in the past year 298,967 people skiplagged through the site, saving a combined $53.6 million.
About half of the flights booked through the site are purchased within a week of travel, when last-minute airfare is typically more costly.
Why airlines object
Airlines oppose the practice. Jesse Neugarten, CEO and founder of Dollar Flight Club, a site that sends cheap flight alerts, said skiplagging disrupts airline pricing models built on passengers completing full itineraries, leading to lost revenue and complicating seat allocation and planning.
American Airlines has said that when a customer does not fly all segments, it can cause operational problems with checked bags and prevent other customers from booking a seat when they might have an urgent need to travel, adding that intentionally creating an empty seat that could have been used by another customer or team member is an all-around bad outcome. Legal action has followed.
In October 2024 a federal jury awarded American Airlines $9.4 million in its copyright infringement and ill-gotten revenue suit against Skiplagged, about half of what the airline’s attorneys sought in closing arguments. A judge in 2015 dismissed a United lawsuit against the site, and Southwest’s 2021 lawsuit was settled out of court.
The rules of the game
Skiplagging is not illegal, but it violates the terms and conditions of most airlines, according to travel advisor Duncan Greenfield-Turk, CEO of Global Travel Moments, who said airlines could strip miles and frequent flyer benefits, bar travelers from future flights, and charge them for the missed segment. Zaman says about 99.7% of travelers who used the site to skiplag in the month were able to complete their trips without problems. The tactic requires strategy.
Travelers cannot book round-trip flights, because missing a leg on a departing flight leads the airline to cancel the rest of the trip, so one-way tickets are needed. Checked bags are not an option because they arrive at the itinerary’s final destination; Zaman recommends a backpack that fits under the seat, since anything larger risks being checked at the gate.
Travelers should also avoid entering a frequent flyer account when booking, he cautions, because the airline might strip accrued miles. Zaman’s view is that if airlines reduced airfare to hub cities, the practice of skiplagging would end entirely. Neugarten noted the appeal is straightforward: for budget-conscious travelers or those frustrated by rising airfare, skiplagging offers a way to stretch travel budgets further.
What to watch next is whether carriers adjust pricing into hub cities — the one change Zaman says would close the loophole for good.
