[dragonwriter]

> Putting an origin and a destination in a form and asking for the price is a clear representation of intent, not to mention buying said ticket.

It's a clear representation of intent to purchase the ticket.

Whether it is a representation of intent to use every leg of travel included as part of that ticket is...at best, a point on which you have provided no supporting evidence, reasoning, or case law.

I think its pretty obvious that in the general case purchase of a composite (or bulk) good or service is not a representation of intent to use all the components, do if you think there is something special about either multileg airline tickets in general or United’s tickets in particular that warrants different treatment, please, feel free to enlighten us.

> It absolutely holds up, in the same way that clicking an "I agree" button in an online transaction is a representation of agreement, which courts have already held to be valid

No, it doesn't, and the cases are readily distinguished, because the representation you wish to infer is (unlike the “I agree” case for contract formation) of a different intent than what is expressly stated by the UI element being interacted with. We aren't arguing over whether a “buy” button indicates intent to buy tickets, but whether it is a representation of intent to use every leg of travel covered by the purchased tickets. Even if the contract of carriage has language to that effect, which might give you a breach of contract claim, I don't think you’ll find much support for the use of language in a contract of adhesion as a representation by the non-drafting party for fraud claim.

[otterley]

> Whether it is a representation of intent to use every leg of travel included as part of that ticket is...at best, a point on which you have provided no supporting evidence, reasoning, or case law.

You're trying to find a loophole that, as a former Federal court intern, I find extremely unlikely to persuade any reasonable judge. When you declare your destination to be ILM in the search field, one can reasonably infer that your intent is, in fact, to travel to ILM. I concede that there's no case law yet on this subject, but I would be surprised if it made it out of the "laughed out of court" stage if you argued otherwise.

[dragonwriter]

> You're trying to find a loophole

No, I'm not.

I'm trying to find an actual false representation, and seeing only a false inference of intent to use every leg of travel from a representation of intent to purchase a ticket; testing this as fraud is something which you seem to admit would see every purchase of an aggregate good or service (the example you specifically addressed elsewhere in the thread being fast food value meals) priced below the price of some proper subset of their components as actionably fraudulent (if not always worth the effort) if the intent was not to use every purchased component but only to save money compared to individually purchasing the components.

[otterley]

I'm going to say this one last time.

The false representation is "I intend to fly to city B." That's it. Nothing else. It's not "I intend to use all components of a series of segments that would get me to city B" as you suggest.

You're making the analysis more complicated than it is, and that's why you would fail to persuade a court.

[sk5t]

The representation is "I would like to purchase an option to travel towards this destination."

[otterley]

Courts apply a “reasonable person” standard when inferring intent from an action. It’s unlikely they’re going to interpret a ticket purchase as an option purchase, particularly since United doesn’t describe their flights as “options” anywhere in their business AFAICT.