This is a weird article. I'd never heard of "skiplagging" before, although I've considered doing it several times. A flight from A to B is expensive, but a flight from A to C via B is somehow cheaper. So you buy the cheaper one and just don't turn up to the B-to-C flight.

The article never really addresses why an airline would set up its prices that way, assuring us that it's too complicated to go into. But it's not that complicated. Suppose you have a popular route, say Los Angeles to New York. There are lots of airlines flying that route, so competition forces down the price. But to save costs, you want to fly via your hub, and again to save costs, your hub is in a place no-one wants to be, like Atlanta. Your competitors are using their own hubs elsewhere. So while there's fierce competition for Los Angeles - New York, there's much less competition for Los Angeles - Atlanta. Therefore you can charge anything you like to people who genuinely want to travel from Los Angeles to Atlanta. And now "skiplagging" becomes a good deal.

In other words, anytime "skiplagging" is a thing, it's prima facie evidence that competition is failing. Or rather, partially failing. Competition is working great for people in Los Angeles and New York, but not for people in-between. Obviously, the people in-between are always less likely to be wealthy, so the effect is regressive. You could conceivably pass a law that skiplagging is always legal, and thus set a ceiling on intermediate routes. But that's a band-aid. The real problem is that air travel is not well-suited to market forces in the first place.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/08/travel/skiplagging-hidden-city-travel-layover.html

The New York Times: The Risks of ‘Skiplagging’ (Christine Chung)