Originally Posted by
Fiberwalker
Update:
When we arrived in Madrid we asked the help desk if they knew what we could do to make sure our return ticket was valid. The lady took a look and said that we would only have to pay ~1,600 EUR each to convert our round trip tickets to a one way ticket. Considering the original ticket was just $225 round trip I thanked for the time and booked a return ticket using United points.
Lesson learned. Sure the ticket isn't cancelled but it effectively is. Wouldn't mind finding a way to push this up the courts in Spain to see what would happen but I don't have any Spanish resources to use here.
Thanks for the update.
I certainly understand that you didn't want to take the risk of relying on your return flight but I was wondering whether you tried to check in online for it just as a test? Or otherwise play around with your booking after the first flight was no-showed, to see whether it disappears as it normally would, or whether it appears to remain valid.
Although what the Madrid agent told you sounds plausible, it also sounds exactly like what they would have said before the court ruling...