Has anyone had any actual experience of not completing an xONEx? How readily do the airlines co-operate to track you down? And how much sympathy might you gain if they chase you?

It seems I'm about to find out, largely on the informal (foolishly followed?) advice of an AA agent at heathrow. I'll share what happens. My somewhat unusual story so far:

I've reticketed thrice already. All paper tickets. Original was on CX stock in London, first reticket with AA in Toronto and sane, second re-ticket in Argentina with AA again and messy, third re-ticket was a joke by FINNAIR - after half an hour struggling with the system the agent just hand wrote tickets with open dates.

I'm in London with mad-ist,cdg-lon left to fly by Sept 1st. I was going to do that last week but things went bang (or rather, thankfully they didn't). After trying to handle this on the phone with FINNAIR and the AA rtw helpdesk I eventually just went to heathrow with the aim of re-ticketing again with just cdg-lon or something (I'd take a cheap eurostar and fly back same day).

When the supervisor worked out that all I wanted to do was comply with my xONEx and had no actual interest in traveling, she advised me to do nothng - that in practice nobody would ever notice (in my messy case at least) if I just threw the coupons away. AA is the only OW FFP I care about, which made a difference to my decision to take her advice.

Paper tickets seem to be a deal of extra hassle all round and opens scope for all sorts of unreliable rule breaking. I suspect my issue won't even be spotted for that reason. Fingers crossed.