Terminating a trip 1 sector early
 

Hi

I am a UK citizen currently working in Germany and have to travel to the US in December. My company has purchased a ticket that routes me via LHR (MUC-LHR-BOS). My return flight is overnight on 23rd December with VA into LHR, then BA to MUC. My question is do I have to complete the LHR-MUC sector or can I collect baggage at LHR and leave the airport. I want to be in the UK for Christmas and don't really want to travel to MUC only to return to LHR the same day!

Firstly, VA is Virgin Australia. I assume you mean VS which is Virgin Atlantic.

If you plan on having checked luggage, the main issue will be if the VS agent at BOS refuses to short check your luggage to LHR rather than MUC.

Otherwise you can just head to Arrivals and clear immigration at LHR rather than following the signs to flight connections.

There are many threads on this subject, especially in the BA section as you can often buy much cheaper fares 'ex-EU' than ex-UK.

The question is primarily whether you will be allowed to short-check your baggage to LHR, as mentioned previously.

Though airlines often refer to this practice as "hidden city" or "point beyond" ticketing, doing this occasionally probably will incur no harm if it's your last scheduled segment.

My caution would be whether you could get into trouble with your employer for doing this. In principle, if the ticket ending at LHR is more expensive or if stopping at LHR violates fare rules (both of which are likely), your corporate travel agent could be billed for the difference in fare. You might want to tread cautiously or even ask permission in advance. Ideally, you should have asked before your employer arranged your travel and offered to pay any difference in fare.

OTOH, if you purchased the ticket yourself, the odds of the airline coming after you to pay more are very low, assuming that you don't do this often on the same FF number. Then the only issue would be submitting the ticket to the employer and representing that you flew all of the flights.

How will you return to MUC from LHR after the holidays? Have you checked the price for a one way ticket? You might decide that the cost savings and miles earnings from the additional LHR-MUC and MUC-LHR flights are well worth your time. Plus, you get to return home to repack with gifts, do laundry, swap business for leisure clothing, etc.

The OP stated that his company purchased the ticket:

In theory yes, in practice I think this is extremely unlikely to happen, and certainly not go back to the employee. I'd be interested to know whose ticket stock this is on, but VS to the LHR, then BA to MUC, is not going to get anyone terribly excited.

Depending on how automated your employer is and which software its travel department or TA uses, the fact that you noshow or otherwise change any aspect of the ticket is reported back for accounting purposes. Most employers could care less so long as there is no cost to them. Thus, just make sure that your employer doesn't care as that's an internal issue for you and has nothing to do with either air carrier.

Your issue will be the short-check. Best and easiest is not to check luggage, especially given generous cabin allowances. Worst is that you need a Plan B if you get to BOS for the return and the agent insists on checking to MUC.

I don't think you'll have a short check issue with a VS/BA combination, not least of all because you can argue you want to get it out between T3 and T5 at LHR.