this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2026
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Heads up, there's a VERY UNETHICAL service out there that works around some of the VERY GOOD AND BENEFICIAL things the airlines do. You should avoid going to it because it ROBS these poor struggling airlines of VALIDLY EARNED profits.
Including a link so everyone can add it to their blocked sites lists. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOU GO TO THIS MONEY SAVING SITE AND PARTICIPATE IN THEIR ANTI-CORPORATIST SCHEMES.
https://skiplagged.com/
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.
Half as Interesting made a video on the subject: Nebula / YouTube
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.
What they do is cancel your entire trip. So if you don't have flights with the same airline on the way back....eh
Yep, and if you have a rewards or membership number, they just will ban you. If it happens once not a big deal, couple times even, start doing it regularly though, you will get caught.
What kind of idiot would have a rewards or membership account in 2026?
most people that fly with their jobs because it can give you a "free" vacation flight fairly often.
Not limiting this statement to airlines.
I haven't paid for a plane ticket since 2012. Made a huge hobby of credit card churning. Probably flew 200k miles on them. Otherwise I'd be skiplagging as the next best option.
Ive heard of people making this happen, but I literally don't know how y'all achieve more than like a single flight or hotel stay per year without already having 200k+ income (i.e. could pay for the trip on your own, just don't want to pay for it).
I’m pretty sure they’re also making more money for the airlines than if they just bought the plane tickets, but it’s slightly procedurally obfuscated, so people are like “omg free tickets”
The airlines do fine; they sell miles/points to banks who actually have money. Almost all US carriers are worth little or negative but their rewards programs have large valuations.
If you pay your bills in full and don't pay interest you are beating the system, and it is "OMG free flights"/hotels/cash. You do give away tons of purchase info but you're giving that away anyway unless you're using cash.
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 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.
Few of these places need to be flown to. They should have trains if they're worried about efficiency.
I completely agree that "major cities" should have trains, but look at Alaska and tell me how many places would be remotely hospitable to trains or their tracks?
Alaska has a really interesting rail system that was built during the gold rush specifically to get people into remote parts of the state that were otherwise almost completely inaccessible at the time.
There's tons of remote villages that don't have trains still mind you, but my point is that if there's a will there's a way. Right now airlines and fuel are subsidized and encouraged by the govt to keep costs down, which relieves development demand for rail. Flip the incentives and rail could theoretically take off in the USA; but that requires politicians with stones and a will to do good instead of... Whatever they are right now.
Switzerland and Japan too. Some places trains just can't work. You got a point I guess.
both of those places have way too many people so overcoming the geographic challenge makes sense
No, dude, I said you were right. Like THE mountains, just entirely in THE mountains. Or the mountainy islands? Doing trains there is silly and stupid And impractical. Just doesn't make sense some places.
Ironically, parts of Alaska have pretty decent passenger train access. It’s mostly for tourists, but still. Better than most of the USA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Railroad
it takea 12 hours and is a once a day train, it really isn't particularly competitive especially because it is more expensive than the plane
I'm not sure I've ever read a more subtle or concise way to say "fuck you" to all of smaller city America simultaneously.
my air and weather shouldn't have to suffer so you can keep your "small town lifestyle", fuck your luxury bullshit founded on the externality of my life. I'm sorry but I'm sick of subsidizing these obscenely decadent parasites who would probably kill me and mount my blue stained scalp on their wall.
I don't mind green energy powered trains. That's cheap, it doesn't intrude on my life any, and gets you where you're going fast clean safe. I'm just against flying them out on a jet.
If they can't manage the 200 year old technology 9f a rail link, perhaps they shouldn't, barring extreme geography, be considered part of my society worthy of my care?
I have no idea what image you have of these smaller airports supporting smaller cities and their surrounding rural populous, but I assure you most are far away from "luxury". Lets take one small city in the middle of Kansas called Salina. Its a city of 47,000 people. The median income is $61,783 and the per capita income of Salina is $34,886 and has a 13% poverty rate. The next closest airport to Salina is 80 miles away. They're not living there just to keep their "small town lifestyle". Its where they grow the food we both eat.
It has a total of 4 small plane flights a day into its airport:
source
Salina is also a major agricultural hub supporting 650 farms for total of over 360,000 acres growing grains and livestock.
Fast rail service versus flying? Have you ever been on a long haul Amtrak passenger rail train? Amtrak is not fast. Salina doesn't have an Amtrak station. The closest one is 90 miles away in Newton Kansas. An Amtrak train trip form Newton Kansas to Chicago takes 12 to 14 hours and the service can experience delays making it even longer. A flight (1 of only 4 flights they have) from Selina to Chicago takes 2 hours and 5 minutes.
I bet the people of Salina would laugh their asses off at you considering them decadent parasites. You're happy to eat the food they produce, but you'd put their their 4 flights a day into their city at risk so you personally could save $50 on a ticket to Chicago by skiplagging?
I have been on Amtrak trains. They're fine. The drinks are bottom shelf and overpriced, the cocktails are a little basic, the seats don't all recline, but they're fine.
Another advantage: you can move agricultural products on train! Livestock, even! Sounds like a pretty good case for having trains, and Amtrak uses the same rail standards as freight, not that Amtrak is the only option for having a train.
Why do they have an airport but no train station? Train stations can be pretty minimal. They're not hard to build. Maybe they should get on that. Especially if they're so poor. Trains really seem like the way to go. This is a bizzaire state of affairs to defend.
I'm vegan and mostly eat fruit recently BTW. I probably don't eat anything from there, and I paid for it if I did. Those vile chuds did not compensate me for the ecological damage of their bizzaire transportation decisions.
I've been on Amtrak too and have firsthand experience with them also. The goalpost wasn't if they were "fine" or not. I was quite happy to use it, but was not in a hurry to get to my destination. Your ascertain was they are fast. For longhaul travel (which is what the flight replaces), Amtrak is not fast.
Because of lots of the infrastructure, rail capacity, rolling stock availability that makes a passenger rail line isn't viable to be self sustaining for that small a population without subsidies, and you're already given them the finger on anything that costs you something.
This is a strange level of hate for people you've never met just trying to live their lives. Brother, you need some socialism in your life and empathy for your fellow man. We're in this together.
Ahh, okay. Thank you for this critical information. I have a MUCH better understanding of your positions now. Thank your for conversing up to now. Have a great day.
They already get those. Money is whatever, climate is a bigger deal.
And it seems like they already need to move a lot of freight. You're really attached to that airport. Have you tried telling it about your feelings? Might be willing to fuckyou. You never know til you ask.
So the thing about trains is they need tracks. Building tracks involves a lot of carbon output. You need to make steel, you need concrete, you need lumber, you need gravel. You need to ship all of these things to wherever you want to build the tracks. You need to buy the land that you’re going to build the tracks on. If you want high speed rail, the tracks have to be very straight and have very specific routes. If you want to electrify the train, you need even more metal for wires.
All that infrastructure, versus just an airport. It would take a lot of math to convince me one is better than the other, here. Once we have electric planes (the tech is mature, you can ride zero emissions planes in Canada right now, we’re just waiting on FAA approval in the USA), I think the balance will be clearly in their favor.
I love trains, but I think there’s room for both trains and planes in an environmentalist future.
Just as soon as we get those carbon capture factories working!
Sounds like something an airline would say.
I get being naturally suspicious especially if we're talking about messaging that may match some from large companies, but don't let language that sounds that way turn off your brain to critical thinking. If you interact in a system (such as buying a ticket as an airline passenger) you can have an affect on the system. Understand your actions to personally enrich yourself may have consequences on other people just trying to fly somewhere. Don't be blinded by big business hate to justify screwing other passengers using the airlines.
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
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.
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.
I use skiplagged all the time, but don’t book through their site. They add fees onto the tickets now. Just book through the airline directly.
Thanks for the tip. We'll see if it bares out.
Do get the sense that these third-party sites are going to become an increased necessity, as data-scrappers and trackers try to peg the price of a flight to the credit card limit of the buyer.
But... idk, I'm not seeing anything on this site that I can't find by directly querying individual airlines. (Like so many other budget airline calculators) there's no inclusion of Southwest on the list. And if the odd deal is inevitably just going to be through JetBlue anyway? Why not shop direct?
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.
I mean, if they haven't figured out how to game the system, presumably. Even then, if I'm also getting the max rate, it's a push.
Idk. These systems always love to overpromise on both ends - big profits for investors, big savings for customers. It reads like a fairy tale coming and going.
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.
Fine if you've got more time than money, I guess.
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.