Skiplagged is David against Goliaths United & Ortiz

Aktarer Zaman, is the 22-year-old techie behind skiplagged.com. His site does one simple thing. Finds out the cheapest ticket between two destinations via the so called "hidden city" route. Basically, the hidden city is the layover city between two destination. So if you are flying from City A to City C, you might find yourself on a flight that stops at City B, en-route your final destination. Sometimes the ticket cost between City A and City C can be cheaper than between City A and B.

So if you follow Zaman's method and want to travel to City B. You actually book a ticket from City A to C. Then when the flight stops over at City B, you simply do not board for the onward journey. This of course only works if you do not have check in luggage. But the savings can be substantial and it seems not what the airlines want travellers to do. So United Airlines and Ortiz that they have filed a civil law suite again Zaman to shut down his site.

Zaman says he never really intended his site to be a business proposition. Just something he set up to help travelers find cheaper tickets. But the attention of United and Ortiz has turned this obscure little site into the latest battle of consumer vs Big Business.

The site used to receive thousands of visitors a month, but since news of the case got out, traffic has exploded.

Traffic on skiplagged.com has jumped since news of the case went viral

Emboldened by the response, Zaman has decided to crowfund the defence of the lawsuite via gofundme.com. His campaign went live on November 26th and is already close to meeting its target of $60,000. Though Zaman says he does not know how much a civil suite is going to cost him, the amount he's raised is right bang in the middle of what a study by courtstatistics.org estimates to be the cost of a civil suite. The site pegs maximum costs at around $120,000.

The point of this post is rather simple. Zaman has demonstrated the power of one. Of a simple techie with a smart idea getting overwhelming support from thousands of netizens riled by what they perceived to be "big business bullying." It does not take a marketing department with a billion dollar budget to get across your idea anymore. It does not take social media smarts or an SEO black belt to win over fans online. 

All you need is a simple powerful idea that resonates with your target audience. So if you feel you have it, use it.