How legit is Airhitch? Seems flaky.

May 5, 2008 7:23 AM

How legit is Airhitch? Seems flaky.

Do you guys have any experience with Airhitch or a similar service?

posted by Taksi Putra to travel & transportation (7 comments total)

My instinct says that hitchhiking is not about 'participating in a program.' There's some weird links at the bottom of the page (virus map?) A good travel organization would focus on their customers' experience, not on cheap money making schemes.
If you really want to hitchhike planes, go to an international airport. Look out for airports with lots of private aircraft, and / or aircraft servicing centres. Post outside the luxurious hotels. Geneva is one of the places in Europe where your chances are better for catching a flight. Still, it's not easy. Good luck!
posted by Psychnic at 7:38 AM on May 5

This page says it's legit, but does recommend against it.
posted by Psychnic at 7:45 AM on May 5

Things like the blinking text and quotes like "Hey, guess what? You're already here!!! LOL!" really worry me about this.
posted by joshrholloway at 7:51 AM on May 5

From the page Psychnic linked to:

To fly with the AH/S concept, you sign up on their web site (www.airhitch.org) and give a multi-day time period during which you're willing to fly, as well as the regions you're trying to fly from and to. A flight from "northeast North America" to "Europe" could depart from anywhere between DC and Montreal, landing anywhere from Lisbon to Berlin.

When you're ready to depart, you get in touch with the AH/S staff through the Net, and they give you a list of potentially Airhitchable flights with their approximate likelihood of success. It's then up to you to trek to the airports involved and see if there's room on the relevant flights, checking back with the AH/S volunteers via the Internet to get further advice. It may take a couple of days, though Segelbaum claims most people get on board the first flight they choose.

Although you pay a $29 fee to participate in the system, you'll only be charged for the flight once you get on board. If you don't fly, you only owe the $29 fee, and Segelbaum says that is often refunded -- but getting that refund appears to be an arbitrary practice based on the AH/S volunteers' pleasure.

Further:

Finally, neither Airhitch gives us much faith in their customer service. (Segelbaum claims to have no customer service, because he has no customers. Whatever.)


In other words, do you have a burning desire to potentially go hundreds of miles out of your way in order to find out that the flight is indeed full, and then be told by the people who sent you there that there's not much you can do, and you're not a customer after all anyway? Just to save a bit of money over regular prices?

There simply must be better ways to get cheap flights.
posted by splice at 8:10 AM on May 5

The Frommers article seems to have the "bottom line" on both Airhitch.com and Air-Hitch.com:

We cannot recommend using either Airhitch.

First of all, international discount airfares have largely caught up with Airhitch prices. AH/S charges $165 plus taxes each way to Europe from the east coast. For a roundtrip flight from LA to Paris, AH/H charges $429-$489 plus taxes. During cheap seasons, we've seen lower fares from Priceline, Hotwire and the airlines themselves. Even during high season, hunting for sales may be more effective than using either Airhitch.

Understand what they're doing: they're not really "hitchhiking," and they haven't found some sort of secret to cheap air travel. They're just selling space-available standby vouchers. This is not new, and they're not the only people doing it.

What they seem to add is the hippy-dippy 'socio-political' lingo to make you feel like you're getting more of a 'travel experience' than if you just went to Hotwire. Oh, and they charge you a $30 fee for participating in their silly program, before they even sell you the voucher. Um, no thanks?

There are lots of other ticket consolidators, including many that offer some degree of actual customer service (as well as understanding that you are, in fact, their customer!). Search "international ticket consolidator" if you want to get an idea of what's out there; be sure to read some reviews, and understand that anything that sounds too good to be true probably is. For whatever reason, air travel seems to be rife with rumors of 'secret deals' (probably because the airlines' ticketing procedures are so opaque), but for the most part they are just rumors. There's no secret handshake that's going to let you walk onto a transcontinental flight for free. If you're careful and flexible as to when you want to go, you can probably do it without breaking the bank, though.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:57 AM on May 5

You may find this article interesting: "Cheap standby seats? Fuggedaboutit!"
It covers the genesis and subsequent demise of international standby travel. Apparently there was a period when several airlines were offering substantial numbers of standby/flexible-date transatlantic fares, driven mostly by Laker Airways' "Skytrain" business model. But Skytrain and Laker imploded (rather spectacularly, in the financial sense anyway) in '82, and most other carriers weren't keen on continuing the idea. Low fares remained, but they weren't standby. More recently, the airlines have gotten better at filling all seats on their flights through normal ticketing channels.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:19 AM on May 5

I have never done this, but it has been recommended to me: fly courier.
posted by Xoebe at 2:32 PM on May 5