Airhitch

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Airhitch

Type	Non-commercial organization
Founded	1969
Headquarters	Cyberspace
Key people	Robert Segelbaum, Founder
Industry	Air travel
Website	airhitch.org

Airhitch is a user-run system for hitchhiking on commercial airliners. It was started by a group of U.S. college students in the 1960s. People who travel in this way generally refer to themselves as Airhitchers. Most airhitchers fly between the United States and Western Europe. Before Airhitch migrated to internet based communication in the 1990s, it operated out of North American offices including New York, Los Angeles(Santa Monica), San Francisco, Seattle, Montréal, and Vancouver, and numerous European cities including Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Bonn, and Rome. Airhitch is a non-commercial system/method/process. Today virtually all exchange of Airhitch information takes place in an AIM chat room. In the chat room Airhitchers use their real names, while the staff use screen names such as Airhitch01, and Airhitch08.

1 The Airhitching Process
2 See also
3 External links

[edit] The Airhitching Process

[edit] Registration

Airhitchers formally commit to participation in the Airhitch system by sending an online registration to the staff.

[edit] Flight-Briefing

With the guidance of the staff, Airhitchers explore the best possibilities for catching rides on flights and the procedural mechanics of how to take advantage of them.

[edit] Decision

Airhitchers decide which flight they will attempt to board.

[edit] Boarding

Airhitchers go to the airport and attempt to board the aircraft.

[edit] Controversy

Many users believe that there is only one actual staff member, Robert Segelbaum, and that he uses a variety of screen names to create the appearance of a large staff.
There is also no evidence available outside of Segelbaum's own website that Airhitch existed prior to the 1990s. Segelbaum also occasionally appears in the Airhitch
chatroom under the screen name "Faye McQueen" and masquerades as a woman.