A federal jury in Fort Worth awarded American Airlines $9.4 million in copyright damages against Skiplagged in October 2024, and the court followed up in May 2025 with a permanent injunction barring the flight-search platform from displaying American’s copyrighted logo. Both sides have appealed. In American Airlines v. Skiplagged, the airline is challenging the jury’s trademark fair use finding, and Skiplagged is challenging the copyright damages, with briefing still underway at the Fifth Circuit as of early 2026.
What American Airlines Sued Over
American filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas in 2023, bringing four categories of claims against Skiplagged: breach of contract, breach of its conditions of carriage, tortious interference with those conditions of carriage, and intellectual property infringement covering both copyright and trademark.
The contract and interference claims targeted Skiplagged’s role in encouraging passengers to violate airline fare rules. American’s conditions of carriage explicitly list “purchasing a ticket without intending to fly all flights to gain lower fares (hidden city ticketing)” as a prohibited booking practice.1American Airlines. Conditions of Carriage – Support American argued that Skiplagged knowingly induced travelers to break that agreement. The intellectual property claims focused on Skiplagged’s use of American’s flight symbol logo and branding, which the airline said constituted copyright infringement and misled consumers into thinking Skiplagged was an approved booking partner.
The Claims the Court Dismissed Before Trial
The jury never heard most of American’s case. In July 2024, the court granted Skiplagged’s motion for summary judgment on the breach of contract, breach of conditions of carriage, and tortious interference claims.2Justia. American Airlines, Inc. v. Skiplagged, Inc. Those were the claims most directly challenging whether Skiplagged could promote hidden-city ticketing at all, and they were eliminated before trial began.
At the same time, the court granted American’s cross-motion for partial summary judgment on copyright infringement, ruling as a matter of law that Skiplagged had infringed American’s copyrighted flight symbol. That left two questions for the jury: how much Skiplagged owed in copyright damages, and whether its use of American’s trademarks was infringing or protected.
How the $9.4 Million Damages Number Was Built
The jury returned its verdict on October 15, 2024, after five days of trial and several hours of deliberation. The damages math is worth unpacking because the headline figure obscures what happened underneath. Jurors found $19 million in actual copyright damages, then determined that American had failed to mitigate $14.3 million of that amount, which left $4.7 million in net actual damages. On top of that, the jury awarded $4.7 million in disgorgement of Skiplagged’s revenues, producing the $9.4 million total.3Justia. American Airlines, Inc. v. Skiplagged, Inc.
The Trademark Verdict and Nominative Fair Use
The trademark portion of the verdict was split. The jury found that Skiplagged did infringe American’s trademarks but that the infringement qualified as nominative fair use, meaning Skiplagged was using American’s name to accurately identify whose flights it was displaying, not to suggest a partnership.4Courthouse News Service. Jury Awards American Airlines $9.4 Million From Website Behind Skiplagging Hack No trademark damages were awarded.
The distinction matters for Skiplagged’s ability to keep operating. A straight trademark loss without the fair use finding could have barred the platform from mentioning American Airlines at all, which would have made running a flight-search engine that lists American’s flights nearly impossible.
The Permanent Injunction
In May 2025, the court affirmed the $9.4 million jury award, added pre- and post-judgment interest, and issued a permanent injunction barring Skiplagged from displaying American’s copyrighted materials on its website.3Justia. American Airlines, Inc. v. Skiplagged, Inc. In practice, that means Skiplagged can no longer show American’s flight symbol logo when listing search results. The injunction does not prohibit the platform from displaying American Airlines flights.
The Fifth Circuit Appeals
Both sides appealed. American Airlines filed a notice of appeal on June 9, 2025, targeting the trademark nominative fair use finding. Skiplagged cross-appealed on June 23, 2025, challenging the copyright damages.5CourtListener. American Airlines v. Skiplagged, 25-10703 As of March 2026, briefing is ongoing and no oral argument date has been set.
The stakes on appeal cut in opposite directions. If American wins on the trademark claim, Skiplagged would lose the ability to use American’s name and marks even for identification purposes. If Skiplagged wins on the copyright damages, the financial deterrent shrinks. Skiplagged’s founder Aktarer Zaman has said the company intends to keep operating, telling Skift, “They want to take us down.”6Skift. Skiplagged Ordered to Pay $9.4 Million to American Airlines – They Want to Take Us Down, CEO Says
What the Case Did and Did Not Decide
The verdict established that scraping and displaying an airline’s copyrighted logos crosses a legal line. It did not decide whether a third-party platform can advertise hidden-city routes, because the contract-based claims that would have addressed that question were dismissed before trial. The legal status of promoting skiplagging, at least by a platform that strips out copyrighted imagery, remains largely unresolved.
What This Means for Travelers Who Skiplag
The lawsuit is a corporate dispute over intellectual property, not a case about individual passengers. Travelers face a separate set of consequences governed by the airline’s conditions of carriage, which every passenger agrees to when buying a ticket. American’s conditions spell out what it can do if it catches a passenger using a prohibited booking practice like hidden-city ticketing:1American Airlines. Conditions of Carriage – Support
- Cancel any unused segments of the itinerary, including a return flight.
- Refuse boarding and refuse to handle checked baggage.
- Withhold refunds, even on a ticket that was originally refundable.
- Bill the passenger the fare difference between the ticketed route and a direct flight to the actual destination.
- Recoup expenses the airline incurred, such as delivering bags to the wrong city.
Other carriers have similar policies. Delta reserves the right to cancel unused ticket segments and charge the full direct fare. Alaska Airlines goes further, stating it can delete frequent flyer points, terminate program membership, and pursue legal action against the passenger. How aggressively any airline enforces these policies is debated. Zaman has said that in eleven years of operating Skiplagged, he has never heard of a passenger being banned for life, calling such reports rumors.7CNBC. A Hidden Travel Hack Saves Money on Flights – If Travelers Can Pull It Off The contractual authority to impose those penalties still exists, and a passenger who skiplaggs repeatedly on the same airline is testing that authority.