Jury Awards Airline $9.4M In “Skiplagging” Lawsuit

Courthouse News reports:

A Texas federal jury awarded American Airlines $9.4 million on Tuesday from a travel website behind the controversial “skiplagging” hack of booking cheaper tickets to a connecting city and then abandoning the subsequent flight on the ticket to a final destination.

Jurors deliberated for several hours after five days of trial before U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman in Fort Worth. They ordered New York-based Skiplagged to pay $4.7 million in disgorgement from the travel site’s revenues and another $4.7 million for copyright infringement.

Skiplagged has made over $90 million deceiving customers using American’s brand without permission, while American has lost millions from the resulting lost ticket sales. The airline claims Skiplagged usually charges a $10 fee per one-way ticket, but sometimes the fee is 10% of the base fare.

Read the full article.

A jury awarded American Airlines $9.4 million from a travel website behind the “skiplagging” hack of booking cheaper tickets to a connecting city and then abandoning the subsequent flight on the ticket to a final destination. @davejourno https://t.co/6fuXWaYxpw

— Courthouse News (@CourthouseNews) October 17, 2024