Budget Travel - No show on return flight ?

Since the fare for a return ticket from LON to my destination in the US is much cheaper than a one way, I'm considering discarding the return portion of the ticket.
Does anyone have experience with this method - what will happen ?
Will my FF account be removed or something else dreadful occur i.e. my CC be charged for the difference, as some experts like George Hobica of Airfarewatchdog claim ?

After the outbound flight, just call the airline to cancel, tell them something came up.

Just don't make a habit of it, and you'll be fine.

Since the fare for a return ticket from LON to my destination in the US is much cheaper than a one way, I'm considering discarding the return portion of the ticket.
Does anyone have experience with this method - what will happen ?
Will my FF account be removed or something else dreadful occur i.e. my CC be charged for the difference, as some experts like George Hobica of Airfarewatchdog claim ?

People do this all the time and I've never heard of anyone actually being charged extra for not using the return portion of their ticket, so Im sure you would be ok.

Personally I wouldn't even ring up to cancel the return portion of my ticket as I'd think it was drawing attention to myself and the airlines are totally used to noshows on every flight and already allow for it.

The airlines do concider this to be abuse of the Terms and Conditions though so as another poster said, don't do this too regularly. I have read reports of people having airmiles and status points removed from their accounts after doing it one too many times. Thats extremely rare as well though.

People do this all the time and I've never heard of anyone actually being charged extra for not using the return portion of their ticket, so Im sure you would be ok.

Personally I wouldn't even ring up to cancel the return portion of my ticket as I'd think it was drawing attention to myself and the airlines are totally used to noshows on every flight and already allow for it.

The airlines do concider this to be abuse of the Terms and Conditions though so as another poster said, don't do this too regularly. I have read reports of people having airmiles and status points removed from their accounts after doing it one too many times. Thats extremely rare as well though.

Your unused segment might have some value left, so calling might get you some value back although I think on cheap fares there's always something to the effect of "No value after first segment is flown". So if your fare allows it, you might want to call(might get something back after the change fee).

This was many years ago, and things may have changed, but I thought I'd share this anyway:

My husband was working near GVA at the time, coming home for a long week-end every 2-3 weeks.

Driving to the airport one Friday afternoon he was involved in an accident and ended up in hospital (nothing too serious, just a couple of broken ribs).

Later that afternoon I phoned the airline to cancel his next trip (outbound from the UK the following Tuesday), and I mentioned in passing that he had not been able to use the return portion of the previous booking because he was being taken to hospital at the time. Both tickets were of the "no changes, no refunds" type. I was only phoning out of courtesy, not because I was expecting a refund.

The agent put me on hold... then got back to me and offered me a refund for the unused ticket and a 50% refund for the unused return sector! And this despite the fact that a one-way from London to GVA would have been a lot more expensive.

Ever since then I've always made a point of telling airlines when I've not been able to use a booking.