Orbitz Settles Lawsuit With Hidden Cities Startup Founder

Orbitz Worldwide and Skiplagged, a New York-based startup showing hidden city itineraries, settled their lawsuit.

However, United Airlines, which filed the lawsuit jointly with Orbitz against Skiplagged, has not come to terms with Skiplagged. There are no talks under way between United and Skiplagged.

Orbitz and United sued Skiplagged in November for allegedly interfering with airline-travel agency contracts by showing unauthorized itineraries, and for trademark infringement.

Skiplagged, founded by a young entrepreneur, Aktarer Zaman, enables flyers to book cheaper flights by deplaning at a stopover instead of continuing on to the ticketed destination, and his crowdsourced defense fund has so far raised more than $75,000 on GoFundMe.

Under the terms of the settlement, Skiplagged agreed not to redirect traffic to Orbitz.com or other Orbitz Worldwide websites, and not to use Orbitz trademarks, including logos, images and copyrighted materials.

Neither party admitted any wrongdoing.

While Skiplagged stopped linking to Orbitz sites for users who wanted to book a hidden city itinerary, Skiplagged is now sometimes linking to CheapOair.com for bookings.

It is doubtful Skiplagged has authorization to link to CheapOair.com, which couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

United, meanwhile, argues that Skiplagged’s hidden-city practices could lead to the airline to permanently lose customers when flights erroneously show they are full, but actually have seats available that could be sold because passengers got off the flight at a city that is supposed to be a layover.