FORT WORTH — The CEO and founder of Skiplagged Inc., a website that promotes the practice known in the airline industry as “hidden city ticketing,” testified Monday that his company used American Airlines’ trademarked logos for years without permission, directed passengers to the airline’s site to purchase tickets even though Skiplagged is not an authorized ticketing agent for American Airlines and warned its customers not to mention that they were buying their tickets through Skiplagged.
Aktarer Zaman said from the stand that he doesn’t think anything his company did was illegal or improper.
“I believe to this day that our use of the [American Airlines] logos is fine,” he said.
Zaman’s testimony came on the opening day of American’ multimillion-dollar trademark-violation federal lawsuit against Skiplagged, a New York-based company that is a leading online promoter of hidden city ticketing, or “skiplagging,” a practice by which, under some conditions, travelers can save money by booking a flight with a layover in their intended destination, where they plan to exit the airport and skip the remaining connecting flights.
Zaman was questioned for just over an hour by Paul Yetter of Yetter Coleman in Houston, one of the lawyers for American. Zaman is to resume his testimony Tuesday morning before an eight-member jury in the court of U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman.
American contends that Skiplagged’s marketing practices violate the airline’s ticketing policies, put buyers who book flights through Skiplagged at risk of having their tickets invalidated, infringe on American’s trademarks and, because of hidden fees, fraudulently promise customers lower fares than they end up paying.
“It is the classic bait and switch: draw consumers in with the promise of secret fares, and instead sell the consumer a ticket at a higher price,” the airline said in a complaint filed in August 2023.
The trial is expected to last about a week.
In his opening statement to the jury, Aaron Tobin of Condon Tobin Sladek Thornton Nerenberg of Dallas, told jurors that American waited eight years to sue Zaman’s company, leading the 32-year-old online entrepreneur to believe the airline had no objection to his company’s use of American’s trademarks.
“For eight years, they sat on the sidelines. They did nothing and said nothing,” Tobin said.
Court documents contend that American made money as a result of Skiplagged’s activities.
“Skiplagged’s use of American’s trademarks led to additional sales of American flights for which American benefitted,” one pretrial document said.
Under questioning by Yetter, Zaman testified that a claim on Skiplagged’s website saying the practice of hidden city ticketing “is perfectly legal” was made without consulting a lawyer, even though Zaman knew the practice violated the airline’s ticketing conditions.
He also acknowledged that Skiplagged advised its customers online not to mention the company if they were confronted by American about their use of the hidden city hack and, indeed, to deny that they had employed it.
“I can see how this could come across as potentially telling them to lie,” he said. But he added that was never Skiplagged’s intention; rather, he said, the online warning was intended merely to inform customers that there were risks associated with purchasing hidden city tickets.
According to one court document, Zaman, who founded Skiplagged in 2013, has a “symbolic” salary of $1 million a year. It’s not clear from the document what makes the seven-figure salary “symbolic.”
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