I didn’t say I was indifferent to the topic, I said I’m indifferent to the conflict between the individual and the airline. Further, I have actually answered the question posed by the OP: ought skiplagging be permitted? Yes. And, as I have said, airlines ought equally be permitted to enforce the (by no means unconscionable) provisions of the contract of carriage against people who do skiplag.
Businesses put rules in place all the time that don’t necessarily follow legal criteria. “No shoes, no shirt no service” is one. It’s clearly legal to walk around barefoot.
Guess what? It’s their business and their rules. They have little sympathy for you if an alternative means of transportation to get from Boise to Ft. Lauderdale may not be as convenient.
I agree that the airlines, as a whole, add a lot more value to humanity than casinos do. 
What passengers do is not extortion. If however someone goes in to sample the food with the express purpose of checking it to report problems, that’s called a restaurant inspector or critic or checker from the parent company.
Your scenario is more like someone arriving late to a flight on purpose and threatening to make a big stink unless comped.
My brother found that casinos on the strip stopped card counting less by having guards toss people out and more by instituting dealing policies, like multiple deck shoes, to make it impractical. Fremont Street casinos tended to be friendlier to counters, guessing (probably correctly) that most people who think that they can count can’t. If the airlines didn’t want people to do this, they can create fare structures that make it impossible. If they think they can profit more by having the structures they do, they can enforce it however they want, but please no moral outrage on their part. Especially not from an industry that would put credit card readers on the toilets if they think they could get away with it.
So I agree with your second paragraph.
I think that was disproved in another thread. IIRC someone was using data from Covid years. For example United alone had a profit of $737,000,000 last year.
United moves roughly a half a million people per day. So about 180 million people per year. IOW, they made about $4 per head per flight.
Doesn’t seem like outrageous ripoff profiteering to me.
Big numbers are impressive until you apply the correct big denominator under that big headline numerator.
The volume numbers are similar for Delta and American, with Southwest & JetBlue bringing up the rear. I’m not going to dig up their profit figures; it’s bedtime here. Be my guest. You’ll find that on a per-passenger basis it’s chicken feed. There are just a very large number of chickens.
How come the airline is allowed to substitute and I’m not. I flew to my mother’s funeral in Cleveland. I booked a direct flight from Hartford to Cleveland. When I got to the Hartford airport around 6:30 in the morning, my flight had been canceled. It was not weather related. With no prewarning they boarded us on a Hartford to Atlanta flight then an Atlanta to Cleveland flight. Naturally I arrived late. If I’d known I couldn’t have a direct flight I’d have taken the much easier New Haven to Philadelphia to Cleveland and been on time.
The extralagged me.
If your first leg is delayed so you miss the second flight, is it skiplagging if you refuse alternative flights and insist on terminating your journey?
One difference might be that you’re letting the airline know that you’re declining the alternative itinerary.
Well you both can, but there may be consequences. If you do it, they can suspend your flying priveleges on their airline, lose your FF miles, etc… If they do it, you can choose to fly another airline and no longer fly them.
I recently did this on a flight from Kansas City to Nashville with a stop in Philadelphia (we were going to Philadelphia). The direct flight was around $315/ticket and the the skiplagging flight was $140/ticket. After we got off in Philadelphia we told an attendant my wife had a kidney stone and we needed to go to the hospital. They marked it as a medical emergency and I never heard another thing about it. I don’t know that I could get away with it again on that airline though. Maybe one more time. We figured it was better to give them an excuse why we were leaving and give them a chance to fill the seats rather than just skip out and leave them in the lurch.
I’ll just say that I have done this without issue.
For instance, I was supposed to connect through Philly back to Boston, and when I couldn’t get home that day (I arrived in Philly mid-afternoon) I rented a car and drove home.
I spoke with the agent in the lounge, she couldn’t get me home until the next day, so I stared looking for a rental car. I didn’t say anything to anyone, just got my car and drove home.
You might not have told anyone that you were renting a car - but the airline knew your first flight was delayed and knew you didn’t book a alternative and with the cities involved , a person might have planned to fly and only decided to drive when the next flight was the next day. On the other hand, if your first flight wasn’t delayed and you didn’t get on the second leg of your flight which was Atlanta to NY you probably planned that all long , unless it would take days to get another flight.
Because pricing isn’t based only on distance but on demand. A to B is popular. They want $X for going from A->B. Period. It is up to them to allow it to be cheaper to go A->B->C. Don’t like it? Don’t fly with them.
I’d prohibit people from leaving the plane at B unless they show a ticket that terminates at B. Or I’d charge them the full A->B fare even if they’re ticketed to C, and issue a partial refund only if they deplane at C.
Airlines get to make up the prices. No one is holding a gun to your head to make you get on their flights. You don’t get to decide that they’re policy is silly/wrong and that you get to change it as you see fit.
Hard to do if the passenger is catching a connecting flight.
How so? My ticket always states origin and final destination. If there are intermediate stops, they would not match my “destination” on my ticket. I’m proposing that you need to present your ticket to get off. If the destination is not where your are, you can’t get off. Very easy to police. If the plane is at the end of its planned flight plan, then no ticket check is required to exit. Those catching connections there would not be inconvenienced. If your trip requires plane changes, then you get issued tickets for each leg.
So if you’re flying, say, from New York to Milwaukee, with a stopover in Chicago, you are always on the same plane and won’t need to deplane in O’Hare and catch a connecting flight? Somehow I doubt that’s always the case.
We recently flew from Wichita to Buffalo. We flew first to Chicago, then to Buffalo. At Chicago, we had a 2-hour layover before we boarded our flight to Buffalo. I didn’t check, but it’s possible that a flight from Wichita to Chicago would have been more expensive than what we paid to fly from Wichita to Buffalo. If we wanted to go to Chicago, we could have purchased the Buffalo tickets, deplaned in Chicago, and simply left the airport.
That’s just this side of kidnapping. You can play the “I’m going to duct tape you to your seat” game when you’re at 36,000 feet, not when you’re on the ground and the jetway is connected.
Charge them whatever penalty you want, but you have to let people off the plane if they they wish to deplane when others are also leaving.
Exactly. That’s how a hub airport works; bring in people on one leg of a flight and send them out on another leg of a different flight.