I'm astonished it's currently legal for airlines to ban passengers for optimizing their ticket fares—for taking the offers the airlines themselves publicly tender, and being too competent at choosing at the best one.
- "American reportedly removed a 17-year-old from a flight last year and banned him for three years when he tried to fly from Gainesville, Florida, to Charlotte, North Carolina, on a ticket with a final destination of New York City. The ticket was supposedly cheaper than booking a flight to Charlotte alone."
There ought to be a consumer protection law about it. Not one specific to airlines, but a universal protection—a "right to optimize", if you will. If you ban customers for taking advantage of a publicly-advertised offer, then why are you allowed to advertise that offer in the first place?
The advertised offer says "no skiplagging". It's buried in the fine print, but it is indeed there.
You can probably get away with it once, if you convince them that you didn't know. But if you've done it before, they'll say that you knew what the terms of the deal were.
- "American reportedly removed a 17-year-old from a flight last year and banned him for three years when he tried to fly from Gainesville, Florida, to Charlotte, North Carolina, on a ticket with a final destination of New York City. The ticket was supposedly cheaper than booking a flight to Charlotte alone."
There ought to be a consumer protection law about it. Not one specific to airlines, but a universal protection—a "right to optimize", if you will. If you ban customers for taking advantage of a publicly-advertised offer, then why are you allowed to advertise that offer in the first place?