Originally Posted by
BA850
Just fly the itinerary you booked. Sounds like you got a good deal on a J fare, which you'd be putting in jeopardy if you follow through on either of the schemes you've suggested.
Indeed, which is why I decided to float the concept here, and as I indicated in the OP, I already have a positioning flight booked and am fully prepared to fly it.
Originally Posted by
johan rebel
Nobody is going to intimate anything. Airlines don't operate on some kind of nod & wink principle. If you do not board your first flight, your status will be set to no show, and your reservation will reflect that fact for all airlines concerned to see.
That was obviously a typo, which I've corrected; it should have read "information". The question was not whether there was some sort of "nod and wink", it was around the
speed of communication from WS's system to KL's. If WS only batched information to KL once a day or a couple of times a day, for instance, the YVR-YYC coupon might not be marked as no-show until later in the day, at which point it might not matter. It was also around when KL's computers would decide to cancel the subsequent segments (or whether this requires manual intervention?). I'm not very familiar with KL, but with AC, I believe there's some kind of lag between a no-show and any further action, because even once a flight is "final" in the system (boarding completed, manifest printed), it can be reopened. The airline wouldn't necessarily want to deal with the consequences of cancelling all onward segments because a GA closed a flight a bit too early then had to reopen it, as one example. And if WS did mark YVR-YYC as a no-show, but I had already boarded the flight to AMS, would KL even cancel the ticket, or would the fact I had used the YYC-AMS coupon supersede the no-show on the earlier segment?
I was also interested in what the actual behaviour of a KL agent on the ground at YYC might be like if presented with the circumstances I described. For instance, if the worst case was that showing up at the counter
before the WS flight departed YVR would result in paying the €1500 fee for using the coupons out of sequence, and that they would simply delete the WS segment without needing to reinstate anything, that would be useful to know.
If you don't have any practical information to share, so be it, but the thoughtless criticism of what is admittedly a risky and unwise concept doesn't help.
Originally Posted by
irishguy28
Sounds like you are hoping to reach reach AMS, or maybe even JRO, before your ticket gets cancelled. If this thought exercise is to see how far you can get before the rug gets pulled out from under you, then by all means, attempt it in real life and report back! We don't have enough guinea pigs willing to test the system in the real world, so it's always interesting to hear a real life experience. But it will be quite expensive to arrange transport home or onwards from wherever you meet your Waterloo!!! (Though I fully expect your Waterloo will be waiting for you at YYC)
Thanks for this. I figured it might be the case that no one had tried something like this, but if there was anywhere to find people who
did have experience with it, it would be FT.
Transportation home from YYC is very cheap though. What would be expensive is arranging alternate transportation from YYC to Africa
