Originally Posted by afraid_of_flying

(I apologize in advance if this is the wrong forum—there are so many and I'm new here, this is my best guess.)

While using Bing travel search (the only reason I ever use Bing!) it found (through Orbitz) several round-trip flights with Continental for

(NYC area) -> (Knoxville)

The cheapest is ~$225, and consists of an Amtrak train from Philly (PHL) to Newark (EWR), then a flight from EWR to Knoxville (TYS).


Now, living in NYC, this is attractive but a bit annoying I would have to get to Philly first, only to take a train back in the direction of NYC (EWR is 30 minutes from Manhattan).

I was curious, could I buy the roundtrip tickets and just show up at EWR for the flight to TYS, bypassing the whole Amtrak train. I called up Continental and they said I can't do this.

I don't believe them.

I believe they don't want for me to do this, but could they actually prevent me from boarding the flight, just because I didn't take the train to the airport? How on earth would they know?

Note: removing the train trips from both halves of the round-trip doubles the cost of the trip. Just EWR<->TYS is ~$470 by itself!

Thoughts? Thanks!