It's not too late to get a cheap plane ticket to Detroit on Sept 12

This morning I reserved a plane ticket to Detroit for the meetup using the ap skiplagged. As usual, this ap saved me a few hundred dollars on the cost of the trip. Over the past year I have saved well over $20K using this ap ( mostly on trips to see the DS). It's called hidden city ticketing. The way it works is that the ap shows you cheap flights that connect in the city you want to get to. These flights are usually much cheaper than flying directly to that connecting city. For example, if you wanted to fly from Atlanta to LaGuardia, the ap would show you cheap flights from Atlanta to various random cities that connect in LaGuardia. You just stay in New York and don't take your connecting flight, effectively flying to LaGuardia at a fraction of the cost of a direct flight.

I have done this dozens of times and it works great. There are only two realistic ways this can go wrong. First you must book one way flights. The airlines hate people who do this, and they will cancel your return flight if you skip the connecting flight in the first leg. Second, you can never check luggage because the luggage will go to your "final destination" which is not where you will be. You also can't be one of the last people on the plane because if they run out of overhead space they will force you to check a bag.

The airlines have also threatened to cancel the frequent flyer account of people who do this, but it's all bullshit. I've done this at least 50 times with two airlines in the past year and I'm still a priority member with both airlines. They won't do anything because they have been loosing the legal battle against this practice. And they don't want the negative publicity of the lawsuits that will follow if they abuse customers who are just trying to save a few bucks. It's like buying a 2 liter drink because it's cheaper, then deciding to only drink half of it. Can the soft drink company penalize you for not drinking all of what you bought? The airlines look like idiots for saying that the answer is yes. Instead of continuing to fight this practice (United's lawsuit against skiplagged was dismissed), the airlines are now simply relying upon the fact that most people are too timid and fearful to "break the rules." So if you're not a timid little wimp, you can cut the cost of airline tickets in half.

So that's why it's not too late to get that last minute flight to Detroit on Sept 12.