Next week I have a flight SAN-EWR-AVP and AVP-EWR-SAN 2 days later. A friend of mine happens to be driving from the Newark area to Scranton and has offered to give me a lift.

Now I know the rule states that if I skip my EWR-AVP segment my return flight "may" be cancelled, but is this really the case or is it a rule they don't usually enforce? And if they did, couldn't I just claim that I did take the flight but that their stellar partner CommutAir must have screwed up?