DelaQ

Hi All
I booked a return flight to ATL the flight is as follows

LHR - ATL on BA

ATL - ORD on AA

ORD - LHR on BA

I am now actually going to be in Chicago Thursday and would rather not have to fly back to ATL to catch the middle flight. What will happen if I just show up for the ORD - LHR flight?

Thanks
PS I am BA Gold

BAEC

JAXBA

You may be okay, but you may be denied boarding for attempting to fly coupons out of sequence. It's a risk.

Welcome to posting on FlyerTalk!

mikeyfly

If you miss a segment of an itinerary, unless very exceptional circumstances, all remaining sectors will be cancelled

Don't consider this !

windowontheAside

This is an interesting one. I am NOT advocating that you try this, but assuming you have a relatively brief connection in ORD, I'd lay a sizeable wager that your no-show on AA wouldn't find its way over to BA for the ORD-LHR to be cancelled (as it should be) before it departs.

I have no evidence for this, just a somewhat underwhelmed view of the IT systems involved.

Again, I don't recommend you try this. But in practice, I think there's a fair chance you'd get away with it. Of course, if I'm wrong and it does trigger your flight to be cancelled you'd be left with a potentially large bill for a walk up ticket.

MSPeconomist

DelaQ

The connection is < 2 hours almost uncomfortably short and flight only 2.5 hours - something tells me you are right, but still a risk

DelaQ

The connection is < 2 hours almost uncomfortably short and flight only 2.5 hours - something tells me you are right, but still a risk

DelaQ

Thanks for the replies - very helpful feel free to continue to give me your thoughts. This is obviously not black or white. So, the question is how risk averse am I?
Interestingly the person I spoke to at the Exec club, didn't say you can't, she said "I can't advise you"

windowontheAside

Yep, I'm generally happy with pretty high levels of risk but I don't think I'd risk testing my own theory here.

Often1

The connection time is irrelevant. It is the time elapsed from boarding at ATL (or not) until the onwards flight departs. That is more in the 5-6 hour range. AA will auto-cancel the remaining segments of the ticket almost immediately after closing the flight for which OP no shows. Whether that takes an hour or two or whether, by sheer luck, BA does not pick it up by the time OP boards at ORD, the risk here is that OP is not merely denied boarding, but that he must purchase a new single ticket at walk-up prices and also suffer a delay until the next flight with availability.

Only OP can judge the risk tolerance, but a single walk-up ticket can cost a small fortune. I take a lot of risks,but not knowing whether 10 minutes, 10 hours, or 10 days is sufficient, means that I cannot even evaluate the risk.

Better question: What will it cost to change the ticket to drop the segment?

Ldnn1

Note that since OP has flown the outbound, it *might* not be hugely expensive to change the inbound to CHI-LON as it will use historic pricing. All depends on the fares and availability but it would be worth checking.

PETER01

A warm welcome to Flyertalk and the BA Board DelaQ although I see you registered years ago so have come out of lurking mode ^.

I'm no ticketing expert but like others have said not a risk I would like to take but perhaps as Ldnn1 has alluded to is the ticket now changeable now you have flown the outbound to make it an open jaw? Fare rules can be very complicated so I'll defer to others about this.

In any case I think if you do go ahead with missing the middle flight then your with almost certainty going to be auto cancelled at ATL when you fail to show.

Off topic but bear in mind you only get 5 posts to start with so just adding that for information.

pythonisman

Have you tried to cancel the second flight?

Depending on the structure of the original fare, making it open-jaw might be allowed? There'd probably be a change fee to pay but it may be cheaper / easier than flying ORD-ATL to catch your original internal flight?
(I could be wrong but that'd be where I'd go rather than no-showing for a leg)

BAEC

OP's title talks about missing the 1st leg .. so its not clear if the OP flew the 1st leg already.