This situation may arise when a passenger wants to travel only one way, but where the discounted round-trip excursion fare is cheaper than a one-way ticket.
For instance, a passenger intending to fly only from Los Angeles to New York may find the one-way ticket costs $800, but that the round-trip fare is $500.
This tactic also requires that the traveler have carry-on luggage only, as typically, any checked baggage items will be unloaded only at the flight's ticketed final destination.
[4] Exceptions to this requirement only occur when re-entering a country where luggage must be processed by customs agents, when changing airports, or when train travel is involved in the flight ticket.
[5] Hidden-city ticketing carries the risk of the initial flight being overbooked or cancelled, and the airline transferring the passenger to a different route that bypasses the connection node.
[8] In 2014, United Airlines and Orbitz filed a lawsuit against Skiplagged, a flight search website focused on finding hidden-city tickets, alleging damages from lost revenues.
Within North America, the usefulness of the strategy has diminished materially, as most airlines have abandoned the discount for a Saturday-night stay-over for these types of trips.
Airlines are strongly opposed to booking ploys because they subvert their revenue management techniques and thus reduce profits.
[14] Many airlines have established means of identifying and penalizing travelers who take advantage of such tactics, most notably through their frequent flier programs.
[16] The court dismissed the case and the passenger's lawyer claimed that it showed that Lufthansa's "conditions of carriage [are] incompatible with German law".