plinn2112

I have a trip to Ohio for work this week. I have relatives in Cleveland, and my wife is going to fly out to join me this Saturday after my work responsibilities are done. We are coming home on the same flight together Sunday night.

Anyhow, last week we felt that it might be nice if my wife could fly in on Friday as we learned other relatives were going to be in town that we wanted to see. We had already made a nonrefundable reservation. I didn't feel like paying $150 plus a difference in fair, so I looked into booking a one way ticket on Southwest for her flight from Chicago to Cleveland (with us still returning together on our booked United flight). It was actually cheaper to do that than change her United reservation.

Wisely, before pulling the trigger on that, I called United and asked if there would be any penalty if she were to simply miss the first leg of the flight. I was surprised to hear that there were fees involved with this. Does anyone know why this is? They were clearly feeling that they profited from selling my seats at the agreed upon price. If anything, I'm one less soda, less weight for the same money...less of a strain on resources yet an increased cost?

travelmad478

This topic has been covered ad nauseam on FlyerTalk.* If you skip any leg of a ticket, all subsequent legs will be canceled. This is pretty much a universal airline practice.





*Welcome to FT, and please make use of the search function!

BLI-Flyer

The only leg that's safe to skip is the very last leg, and then only if you just have carry-on luggage. As the previous poster pointed out, if you skip a leg in the middle, the rest of your ticket will be cancelled.

plinn2112

Thanks for the replies. My question was not about what the policy is, but rather what the business reason behind it is. I looked at a couple threads on this topic using the search function, but all of them seemed to just clarify the policy without going to the airline's justifications. If anyone can point me to a thread that covers this, that would be much appreciated.

Anyhow, I can think of two reasons for this policy:

1. They don't want you to give business to a competitor

2. Your absence has somehow prevented them from selling a last minute ticket for your seat at a high markup

Efrem

The business reason is, to be blunt, "charging all the traffic will bear" and "they can get away with it."

The more restrictions airlines can put in the way of using cheap tickets, the more people will be forced to pay for expensive ones. Airlines like this.

While airlines are easy targets in this regard, I don't think their ethics are much worse than those of any other business. If restaurants could get away with charging you double if you didn't finish everything on your plate, I suspect a lot of them would do just that. Until last week, banks could and would charge you $35 to cover a $5 overdraft. (There's a funny bit entitled, IIRC, "If Airlines Sold Paint," about a hardware store clerk explaining paint pricing as if it were air travel tickets. It's been posted on FT more than once, as well as being all over the rest of the Web. You can probably find it with an FT or a Web search.)

ORDnHKG

And then hotels does the same too, US hotels usually don't do this, but when it is other parts of the world, and especially tour packages, many times it said the price base on double occupancy, single person have to pay extra. Or staying two consecutive nights, each night will be cheaper than 2 bookings of 1 night stay.

seaskybound

Most airlines 'can' have the luggage turn up at an interim stop (you may have to explain you want to take a shower or hand over the luggage to your ex-wife's brother in law's 3rd cousin once removed...)

Wally Bird

This stems from an old practice called "hidden city" ticketing.

Most airlines operate hubs and for competitive purposes a flight from A to C via hub B is often cheaper than either (or both) A to B and B to C bought separately. Savvy travelers figured this out and instead of an expensive B to C flight, bought a cheaper A to C via B flight and just didn't turn up for A to B. Or a variation, buy A to C and get off at B and then use the last B to A leg.

It took the airlines a while to wise up to this, but they eventually did hence the current 'rule'. Some people have been known to sweet talk a CSR with some tale of woe about how they 'missed' the first leg and get the itinerary reinstated, but certainly not a tactic to be relied on.

Efrem

You can ask the check-in agent to "short check" your bags to the connection point. This is technically against the rules of some airlines, since it facilitates exactly the sort of thing this thread is about, but if you have a decent story and a long enough connection on paper to wait for checked bags and recheck them, most agents will do it.

plinn2112

Thanks, this was enlightening for me. How long ago was it that airlines made this change of policy?

number_6

Some did it 20 years ago, some last year; most over a decade. A few airlines never had fares that were blatantly unfair, so there was nothing to game. These types of fares are often used to attack a competitor's hub (e.g. AA will price ATL-ORD-xxx cheaper than ORD-xxx while DL will counter with ORD-ATL-xxx cheap pricing). Often possible to find fares 30%+ cheaper using this approach, as long as you don't mind routing or airline.

alanh

The other caution is that the airline is free to reroute you A-D-C instead of A-B-C in case of a canceled flight, which is a problem if you're really going to B.

Jalinth

Business reason is that non-stop travel between major business centres can command higher fares and they price flights based on the origination and destination. They can also use these higher fares to subsidize others routings that might not work otherwise or work only because they are feeders. key thing about airlines is that you have two very different types of costs. Marginal costs vs "fully loaded" costs. The marginal cost for the RST-NYC flight (assuming a full plane) might only be $40. Anything more than that represents gross profit for the airline. But the airline needs to recover much more to cover off their overhead - paying for the plane, interest, airport staffing, logistical people, etc... Airlines need to either find a route where a flat ticket price will cover off the fully loaded cost and earn a profit or price their product so those people who really need to get to point B pay for it, while those who don't (tourists, etc...) pay enough to cover at least the marginal flight costs and a bit of the overhead.

Parafly9

What if you miss an entire side of the ticket. That's what i need to know - i.e. you just take the return flight(s) but dont' miss any of the legs on that flight.

Ancien Maestro

While airlines frown at skipped legs, and may even call repeat "users" who skip the last leg, there remains the T and C that may explicitly prohibit such use of tickets..

But highly unlikely for the airline to follow that up in court because of anti-trust laws.. Big business vs. the little person.. perception with the law makers.