Originally Posted by
sm4k
if you get a flight North America-Switzerland-Italy to Italy-Switzerland-North American and only fly North American to Switzerland on the way in.. will i still have a valid Italy-Switzerland-North America ticket awaiting my return home at the end of my holiday?
This is called hidden-city ticketing and it's maybe the subject of the most questions on FT. You are asking, of course, because you see it's cheaper to fly to Italy than to Switzerland. Leaving aside the morality of trying to fly to Switzerland for the price of the Italy ticket (which has been debated here ad nauseam -- let's not start that up again), the fact remains that the airlines are on to you. They will penalize you for abandoning the second leg of your outbound trip by cancelling your homebound trip.
People sometimes get away with this if they're only flying one way, check no bags, and keep their frequent flyer number out of the mix. But it's not recommended regular practice, and never in your (round-trip) case.