While rumors swirl that this practice is illegal - it's not. You can land in City B and skip your second leg since flights with layovers can often be cheaper than direct flights. Instead of searching for tickets strictly from City A to City B, Skiplagged also searches for hidden-city tickets - meaning flights from City A to City C with a layover in City B. Hopper said more than 60 per cent of its users are millennials, 90 per cent are leisure travellers and 52 per cent are travelling internationally.Skiplagged finds cheap flights through a loophole in traditional airline ticketing. Unlike some online searches that don't identify the provider, the secret fares provide all details about the flight such as the airline, departure time and arrival time before booking. Hopper said more than 20 per cent of its sales are generated by its artificial intelligence algorithms that make recommendations for trips that passengers may not have even searched for. Smith said the Hopper hopes to offer secret fares soon from U.S. "This is standard and a long-standing practice in the commercial aviation industry," she added. She said private fares are provided to travel agencies at a discounted rate depending on the needs of the airline.
"Hopper, as with other online travel agents that WestJet works with, sells both published and private fares," said spokeswoman Lauren Stewart in an email. "To increase their share, they need to stand out from competing airlines in a way that cannot be publicly replicated," he added.Īir Canada didn't respond to requests for comment, but WestJet said mobile use is an important way for it to connect with potential customers, along with its own website and travel agents. Smith said airlines give the heavily discounted rates to fill planes and increase their bookings beyond their fair share - the percentage of seats an airline flies on a route. It sends more than 400 million push notifications a year. Hopper sends personalized recommendations and data-driven results using push notifications. "Being a mobile-only, closed environment puts Hopper in an extremely unique position to offer a new way to reach brand-neutral consumers who do most of their shopping on the phone," he said in an email. Instead, it communicates directly with app users to avoid triggering a competitive reaction that could lead to a fare war among airlines.Īirlines largely see secret fares as a complementary distribution channel, said Dakota Smith, Hopper's head of growth and business. Hopper said these low fares aren't available online. The app will alert users to secret fares that could result in savings of up to $500 on long-haul flights. The discounts are available on more than 60,000 routes to international destinations such as Tokyo, Melbourne, Paris, Barcelona, Rio De Janeiro and Costa Rica.
Montreal-based app developer Hopper said other airlines such as LATAM, Turkish, Copa and Air China will be joined by other carriers in the coming weeks. MONTREAL - Canada's two largest airlines are using an airfare prediction app to unload some of their seats via "secret fares" at discounts of up to 35 per cent.Īir Canada and WestJet are among the first global airlines to make their flights available for the large discounts, starting Wednesday.
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