Fly to a Hidden City Cheaply

If you’ve ever wondered why you couldn’t book a flight to a stopover city, you’re not alone. Twenty-two-year-old Aktarer Zaman wondered the same thing before creating Skiplagged, the flight booking website that lets users fly to “hidden cities” on flight with stopovers.

The logic is simple: A flight from New York to Los Angeles is $700, but the same flight with a stopover in San Francisco is a couple hundred dollars cheaper. Airline websites won’t list the New York to San Francisco flight, but Zaman devised his own way around this, creating a website that shows users these “points beyond ticketing” as the airlines call them. The site will also search for standard fare flights, so you can be sure you’re getting the cheapest rate possible. Zaman’s site drew the ire of United Airlines but the judge threw the case out, allowing Skiplagged to continue operating.

There are a few drawbacks though. Canceled flights can result in the first leg of the journey getting rerouted to its final destination, leaving Skiplagged users in a different city and spending even more money on another flight. Airlines are also getting wary of this type of service and are willing to shut down frequent-flyer accounts caught doing this.