Missing a leg on purpose
 

Dear friends. I am trying to get a good deal for a return flight in J to Singapore and I'm based out of DXB. As a newbie to Skywards and having newly moved to Dubai, I am not very experienced. However, I've read you can get much better deals through CAI which I now see to be true:

• DXB-SIN-DXB in J Flex 4,027 USD [+12,250 miles]
• CAI-DXB-SIN-DXB-CAI in J Flex 2,025 USD [+16,628 miles] + DXB-CAI-DXB in Y Flex 427 USD [+2,100 miles] = 2,452 USD [+18,728 miles]

Pay ~1,500 USD less for 50% more miles. Having never really gone out of my way for such flight deals, I had a curious thought: what if I just fly to CAI to start the above journey, but miss the last leg of the return flight (DXB-CAI) on purpose so I don't have to do CAI-DXB in the end again? What are the penalties on miles? If I try to cancel this leg while I'm already in Singapore, what happens? The SIN-DXB flight is obviously much more expensive - would I have to pay the difference? Seems so strange that I would have to pay extra to cancel a flight rather than just the lose the money I had spent already.

Nothing will happen, this is call Hidden City ticketing and it's a well known practice. Don't do it regularly though or the airline may do something, also make sure you have a long layover in DXB or better a stopover before DXB-CPT so that they'll short check the bag

If its not absolutely necessary to start from CAI, try starting your journey from BAH or MCT. They're much closer than CAI and probably cheaper fare too

One word of caution: if you are not allowed a STOPOVER in your itinerary (some of these fares do not), you may not be able to retrieve your luggage at the transit point. EK is getting more strict about this.

As long as the transit is long (e.g. 18 hours or so) they still do short check, may depend on the agent, but this worked this year still for some of the members on this board

I had a REALLY hard time at check-in last march with a ~18 hr layover (and it was a legit need for my luggage!) because a stopover wasn't allowed in the fare rules (as opposed to not choosing to do a stopover). Flying J, Plat, blah blah blah.

So just FYI.

be careful, your checked bag will go to CAI...