Originally Posted by
orbitmic
It's happened to me quite a few times. I think it is quite rare if you are on O/D trips as long as flying within the same zone, but the moment you are talking of connecting itineraries, it is actually frequent (in both economy and business) to not be able to make those changes easily/cost-effectively (ie for less than say the price of a brand new ticket). There are also a few O/D tickets which are effectively non-changeable (e.g. some of the I fares from the UK).
Originally Posted by
rossmacd
Saying that if flying for business using two tickets with an unprotected connection is rare, is not entirely reflective of reality.
What I meant was this: Having no option to change your ticket to match your new itinerary is pretty rare. That is why I quoted the phrase "without an option to change to that new destination".
Yes, it can happen if you have a totally non-changeable fare, eg ex-UK I class long-haul as sold to the public. But these are intended to be leisure fares and probably not bought by/for many business travellers. Many business travellers who are flying on comparable fares will be on corporate deals that often have more flexibility, so they would have options.
It can also happen if you're going somewhere relatively obscure that can only be reached by a series of tickets on airlines whose fares won't combine. But this situation too must be relatively rare.
What is more common, I expect, is that there
is an option to change, but the cost of change is very high and it's not really cost-effective to do so. But even in this situation, suppose the original trip had never been booked, and the new destination that comes up at the last minute means that a new trip has to be booked from scratch at that time. There's a decent chance that if it's really expensive to change to the new itinerary, it would be pretty expensive to book that new itinerary at the last minute anyway.
At any rate, it's not hard to understand why a well-informed traveller who already has an existing itinerary that covers part of the new journey might decide to save some money and take the risk - but such a traveller would perhaps plan some sensible margins and make some contingency plans.