Originally Posted by
Often1
OP having read the COC provisions can easily figure out how to purchase lawful transportation to/from the location he wishes to visit.
In the latest hypothetical, in order to save $100, OP places himself at risk for two change/cancellation fees if there is any issue with his travel. If he buys a one-way ELM-DTW-XXX and another one-way DTW-ELM, that will cost him roughly $750 ($250 + $500). But, if by any chance he has to cancel his trip, it will cost him $400 instead of $200 to do so (each ticket gets its own change fee). And, if there's WX or some other issue on the ELM-DTW which causes you to cancel your trip (without penalty), you are still stuck with an unused return for which you paid $500 and have to pay a $200 penalty to use.
FT is full of examples of just how easily this stuff goes wrong. Committing fraud to save $100 and then losing significantly more than than when circumstances go wrong, is a lose-lose.
And to add to the risk, if the airlines determines he has used a hidden city ticketing, the carrier has the right to charge him the original fare from ELM-DTW, and this will have a higher probability of happen when he calls the carrier to cancel his last leg, and to have the RT changed to drop the first leg on the RT.
All the response so far from the OP is showing that he thinks this is common practices, and nearly all post on FTs on this subject on various forums states that one should not do it, as the carrier can imposed numerous actions or penalties, such as suspending your FF account, recalculating the charge, etc.
All response so far has stated "Don't do it", debating whether you should have the right to do it is a moot point.