Originally Posted by
JTE458
With no concern for the current flight/value, is there a restriction in place from him buying a R/T and only using the first one way back to US? Either in the system or by law?
What you're discussing is "throwaway ticketing" which is generally prohibited by the airlines contract/conditions of carriage. That said, it's not uncommon for people to do this -- either intentionally or unintentionally -- with no repercussions, although if you make a habit of it and the airline notices, you could run into issues.
Originally Posted by
indufan
Strangely enough, this isn't always the case. I thought this for years and years and is common wisdom at FT. Many fare rules say "attempt to keep as ticketed, if possible" and you can do the same thing out the outbound. But it gets complicated and agent knowledge can also factor into it. I have never fully wrapped my head around it and I just end up cancelling and reusing minus ASC.
Well I've never seen a fare rule that allows re-ticketing at
historical (i.e., the original) fares when changing the first segment of an itinerary. That of course doesn't mean that such a fare doesn't exist. Certainly any agent would default to "you're changing the first segment so we have to rebook as a brand-new ticket". And beyond that, in my experience, some (many?) agents will also try to re-price the ticket when changing a continuing or return segment before travel has commenced, even though the fare rules say that you can keep the historical fares. You might have to instruct them to read the fare rules (which of course are NOT written in plain English!). Now, once the outbound portion is flown, the system will effectively default to using historical fares, so it's often "easier" to change the return after the outbound has been flown.