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Frank on Fraud

Poor Man First Class Fraud Hack Sets Internet Afire

A new life hack is making the rounds on Tik Tok, and airlines aren’t happy about it. The Tik Tok influencer “NDAInternet” has 800,000 followers and he has the internet in an uproar with his hack.

It’s called Poor Man’s First Class.

And while it sounds like a genius way to get a whole row of seats to yourself, it’s also fraud and can get road warriors in big trouble with the airlines.

Get A Whole Row of Seats To Yourself

The fraud hack works like this, according to one man that claims to do “Poor Man’s First Class”.

He buys the two seats next to his own seat weeks in advance and pays the fully refundable airfare for those seats. Then as he is getting on the flight, he immediately cancels the two seats next to him which ensures that he gets the full row to himself.

Now, who doesn’t want a full row of seats to themselves right? But this is actually considered fraud by the airlines and against their terms of service.

According to the website ViewFromTheWing, they actually say this type of Poor Mans First Class is not advisable for 3 reasons:

  1. You can actually book more than one seat for yourself. “Poor man’s first class” would be buying 3 seats in a row for yourself, cheap, and major airlines generally let you do this but you’ll need to call.
  2. Canceling tickets at the last minute, though, doesn’t actually get you these empty seats. Passengers on standby will get them, certainly on a full flight. Other passengers may move into these seats also.
  3. It’s against airline rules, in fact, it is fraud. You may have your frequent flyer account closed, and could even be banned from travel on the airline.

This practice is similar to one that passengers used to employ years ago to obtain upgrades, until airlines caught on and tightened restrictions.

Essentially, customers would reserve refundable first-class tickets to reserve seats in the cabin and prevent them from being sold. They would then cancel these tickets at the last minute, making upgrade seats available. Passengers with the highest status would be first in line to secure these seats.