IAN-UK

I got the impression that the accounts in question might have attracted the attention of the auditors for a number of reasons ....

kanderson1965

I hadn't realised that fact and cross-posted with the ever helpful CWS. Is this common practice elewhere or just LHR T5?

NickB

No, it is not common. T5 is the exception rather than the rule.

Fitch

I can't imagine what form this could possibly take. What Risk function would ever sanction staff writing potentially derogatory notes about customers ?

After all, it would by definition be information personal to you and hence you would have a right to see it.

The only thing they could do I suppose is set your CIV to 0 (or negative !!) but I've no idea what practical implications that would have...

Richmond_Surrey

I dropped last leg on AA and so far had no problem, points and miles have posted on BA account. It wasn't intentional, had small accident day before return flight and decided there's no way I will make it on time to other airport in London.

Cap'n Benj

Their robust way of dealing with it with me was to award me the miles and TPs!

Blueboys999

I have never set out with the intention of dropping legs on a AA booking but, of unexpected necessity, I have dropped returns legs 3 or 4 times over 20 years and maybe a final leg on 1 occasion. I haven't experienced any problems but I would never feel 100% happy doing it deliberately.

chada

To add some perspective, had no problems short checking from SFO to LHR about 10 days ago...

IAN-UK

I do the final leg simply because it I would feel vaguely uncomfortable not doing it - oh, and the TPs/avios come in handy

OK, a wedding had me winging towards Scotland when i should have been on a flight to Oslo, bit I think my karma is safe

Often1

OP's travel is not until the summer and this appears to be a developing area of "practice" just now. I would take no comfort from what has gone on before and for GBP 1,500 plan on traveling on to DUB and making my way homeward from there.

Things may change for the better or worse (all depending on how one defines those terms).

Dicksbits

I know someone who did dropped the last segment of their ticket after their flight back from JNB to LHR on Jan 01. They asked at checkin for their bag to be dropped at LHR and was told yes. His bag never appeared, and when he tried to find out where it was he was told it had been stopped in London when he didn't show for his final sector, but eventually was sent to AMS (where original ticket started). He's been told he will be reunited with his bag, but in my view there's no reason why BA should 'pay' to transit his bag over to the UK. I need to speak to him again and find out the conclusion of this story, and what he said to BA on the phone in reply to the Q of why he didn't take the final sector. I guess he might have said he was too ill to board the connecting flight to AMS (final leg).

TyneTraveller

I think these days this is by far the safest advice and best way to think of it.

I am doing the same in the summertime, and returning from DUB is certainly no hardship considering the monetary saving. If returning on the BA286, you would have to stay overnight in DUB and connect the following morning.....unless you were to route back via LHR with BA of course. If you wanted to connect directly back to NCL the same day it is possible using the BA284 and the BA836, which arrives in to DUB from LHR at 14:40. There is an Aer Lingus (Stobart Air) ATR72 that leaves DUB bound for NCL at 17:30 all days apart from Saturday if you fancy risking it.

My advice would be to take the risk factor out by nightstopping, and use the FR service the next morning for £17.99

QueenOfCoach

There is a mega-thread in the AA forum about Account Audits. Contained within the thread are stories of Hidden City ticketing.

(Hidden City = ticketing AAA-BBB-CCC-BBB-AAA, they flying AAA-BBB-CCC-BBB where BBB is your real destination, and getting off the plane and leaving the airport in BBB.)

The high points that can be gleaned from this thread is that AA does nothing for the one-off Hidden City ticket. There are too many legitimate reasons why a passenger might skip a segment, especially the last segment when there are no further segments to get cancelled. The passenger could become ill, hear of an emergency, run into a buddy who offers to drive, whatever.

Do it once, no one notices, no one cares.

AA seems to be interested in the serial offender a/k/a "the low-hanging fruit". This would be the guy commuting to work or a consultant gig. When you "get ill" seven weeks in a row, just before the DFW-AUS flight, they notice. They want to recoup the lost revenue from the Hidden City ticket and prevent further activity in the future.

What do they do? Here are a couple of examples.

1. Freeze and zero-out the AAdvantage account, then send you an email itemizing your Hidden City activity and the difference in revenue between what you actually paid and what you actually flew. IIRC, one guy was faced with a $20,000 difference.

2. A group of road warrior consultants, based in Dallas, were buying Hidden City tickets to Austin, then skipping the final segment. After doing this several weeks in a row, they were met at the arrival gate by some AA employees with no sense of humor and told that, apparently, they had trouble in the past "finding" their Austin departure gate, and these not-so-friendly folks were there to assist them and ensure they got on the Austin flight.

If, in fact, DFW was their true destination and if they had no desire of flying to Austin, then the AA employees would escort them to the ticket desk where their tickets would be repriced accordingly.

_____

It happens that I am a database administrator. I work for a large concern, similar to an airline. I have never worked for any airline. I can well imagine how the airline would find Hidden City and other irregularities. (It's not that hard.) In my shop, it's a matter of going after the "low-hanging fruit", which means the serial offender as I mentioned above. No one cares about the single-time or very occasional random offender. We want to plug a constant revenue leak that is likely to continue long into the future if not checked. In the case of an airline, it's also a matter of keeping no-shows to a minimum.

jock

Waiting for someone to shoot me down here...

Surely if I buy something..Any product..I can do what I want with it.

If I buy a flight..and I get off before it finishes..surely that's my choice?
I paid for X airlines to fly me from A-C via B, and on the return journey I get off at B on the way back. Why is that A big deal?

People keep bringing up the price difference too. Well that's to do with the airlines. They charge more in the UK cause they can. In Europe..they charge less cause they can't charge as much.

Richmond_Surrey

QueenOfCoach these example are of serial offenders in USA but what's AA stance when last leg is on different carrier outside of USA? When you fly USA-LHR-Europe. Also flights could be ticketed on AA but are on BA/EI metal. A lot of combinations.