The Real Story Behind Orbitz and United Suing the Hidden Cities Startup Guy
Skift Take
Skiplagged's hidden-city practices are screwing up Orbitz's relationships with airlines so that's one reason for the lawsuit. Another factor is that startup founder Aktarer Zaman has been outsmarting his adversaries at every turn.
When Orbitz Worldwide and United Airlines finish suing Aktarer Zaman, the 22-year-old founder of Skiplagged, they might as well hire him because, as they admit, the wunderkind has outsmarted the two companies every step of the way.
Zamon operates Skiplagged, which enables flyers to book cheaper flights by deplaning at a stopover instead of continuing on to the ticketed destination, and his crowdsourced defense fund has so far raised more than $50,000 on GoFundMe.
Skiplagged finds "hidden city" tickets, and uses creative ways that frustrated the tech geeks, especially at Orbitz, to deep link to Orbitz, United, and other sites so travelers can book the flights.
"To counteract Zaman’s conduct, Orbitz is continuing to investigate ways in which it may detect customers originating on Skiplagged and prevent the hidden city bookings from being made on the Orbitz site," according to the suit [embedded below], which was filed in November. "Nev
